Mercury Transit Sequence

[Aratus]

Ten images taken 2 minutes apart between 1410 and 1430 UT.

Plenty of cloud before hand and then a power cut brought the session to the end. One of those days!

[Hankmeister3]

Sweet! I see I came to the right place.

Unfortunately we're clouded and snowed-in here in central Illinois all morning long. Zero opportunity to image this somewhat rare transit though Don Quixote and I had long planned to image Mercury's transit of Sol. I was very disappointed to not be able to use my Baader Planetarium glass solar filter on my 8-inch Meade SCT. Drats and double drats!

[Don Quixote]

Yes Aratus !
I likes your image!
Thank you.

[jrkirkham]

Thank you for posting.

[Graeme1858]

Nice sequence Aratus.

Bad time for a power cut!

Regards

Graeme

[OhNo]

Nice job, I had the same plan as you, except I chose 10 minute intervals. I was controlling remotely due to cold conditions, and my camera timed out and shut down after the third shot. So I get that we had well laid plans.......

[Bigzmey]

Neat!

[Lowjiber]

Nice sequence, Aratus. Thanks for the share.

Clear Skies

[Aratus]

I'm sorry to hear that so many people had problems with this. The weather can't be helped - especially in November. The annoying thing was that when the power cut came, the laptop switched over to its battery, and I could have easily popped a battery in the the camera. I can run the mount from the solar powered leisure battery too, but already shadows from a tree were being cast on the solar filter. I don't think I would have got many more frames. I did consider taking a chain saw to the tree, but it seemed a rather drastic action to take! :Think:

The sun was very low, and would have gone behind more distant trees in about half an hour.

[Aratus]

I did also got this close up sequence during a small break in the clouds just after the transit began. The images were taken between 1339 and 1344.