Mercury Transit from Rock Hill SC

[DeepSolar64]

All,

Today I observed the transit with a close friend of mine who lives in Rock Hill SC. We had some high clouds early but it later ended up to a clear blue sky so we got to observe the entire event. We used three scopes. My Orion 70mm white light solar telescope and Meade Coronado SolarMax II 60mm Ha Solar telescope. He outfitted his Takahashi FS 102 apochromatic refractor with Baader Astrosolar film for white light observing and used his Nikon DSLR to do some photography as well. I used only my iPhone to the eyepiece for pictures.

I also followed the event closely using the NSO GONG Network and SDO site.

It was a different experience watching that tiny perfect BB cross the sun and realizing it was a planet. If the pre-enlightenment world would have had telescopes this would have been proof-positive that we were NOT the center of the solar system!

My pics are not the greatest but I will post them anyway.

We used magnifications from 16x all the way up to 176x. Seeing was pretty rough.

James

P.S. The pics are taken using the Orion 70mm. Obviously not an APO! I plan to get a Baader continuum filter to reduce the effects of Chromatic Aberration.

[MAURITS]

Nice to see James.

[Montana]

Wonderful!! I am glad you had some good skies to see this tiny tiny planet. I wonder what the Sun looks like in the sky from that little world?



Alexandra

[DeepSolar64]

Yes, I am thankful to see it. Clouds knocked me out of the Venus transit several years ago. I won't live near long enough to see the next one. I gotta settle for pictures and videos on this one.

[marktownley]

Looks like you had a lot of fun, nice shots!

[eroel]

James:
A nice transit session in spite of clouds.
Best wishes,
Eric.