Mercury Transit 2016 – Urban Astronomy

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

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