There is a transit of mercury on the 9th May 2016. The view from Cherrytree Observatory will be as shown in the illustration below.

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Thanks, Steve

So here’s the predicted path shown as seen by an equatorially mounted scope (the above image is of a non-rotated alt-azimuth mounted scope.

Path of Mercury across the face of the Sun

What a fantastic day. The whole transit was visible with clear blue skies all day. With a transit time of 7 hours 20 minutes there was plenty of opportunities for images. The basic setup is shown below. An EQ8 mount with a dual setup with a LS60THa/B1200C-PT used for H alpha images, a WO Megrez 72 with an attached Lunt Ca-K Module with B600 Blocking Filter diagonal. Both of these scopes offer a full disk image when paired with a Point Grey GS3-U3-28S4M-C camera. To give close up images (f10 and f25) a Celestron Omni XLT 102 was used with a 2.5x power mate when required.

Ha and CaK scope setup
Celestron Omni XLT 102 with CaK line setup

Here’s a few images (from many) from the day:

CaK Full disc image @f6

Partial Disc CaK image @f10 shows mercury passing plages
CaK closeup @f25
Full disc Ha image showing a lot of surface activity

Thanks for looking – Steve