2016 Mercury Transit

The Mercury transit...

Well, I almost missed it. Most of Texas (and the United States, for that matter) was socked in with clouds. The few places that were clear were too far for me to travel.

But amateur astronomers almost always hold on to at least a little bit of hope, even when the odds are overwhelmingly against us. We patiently scan the sky for "sucker holes" and engage in our preferred ritual superstitions to drive away the clouds. (Yeah, I know, we're supposed to be scientific and all that...but desperate circumstances often lead to desperate actions.)

The sky DID clear up for a few minutes--at least enough for me to focus and get a few shots in. It's nothing spectacular, but here it is:

Click here for the full-size version.

Mercury is the dot to the upper-right of center. The big sunspot group to the left is AR2542. Other smaller sunspot groups are also visible.

This is a stack of four exposures, each 1/2000th of second at ISO-100, taken with a Canon T3 on my Orion ShortTube 80. I used an Orion full-aperture solar filter, and the Baader Contrast Booster (to reduce chromatic aberration). The images were stacked and wavelet sharpened in RegiStax5. I did an "auto color" correction in Photoshop CS6 to brighten the image a bit.

Click here to see my images of the 2012 Venus transit.

Mercury-Venus-Jupiter Conjuction

I finally got a clear shot of the western sky to see the Mercury-Venus-Jupiter conjunction. This will be the closest grouping of these three planets until 2021.

Mercury is the faint "star" near the top-center of the image. Venus is the bright object near the center, and Jupiter is located below and slightly to the left of Venus.

Mercury (top), Venus (center) and Jupiter, May 29, 2013.

I was in the back corner of my yard taking pictures when the sprinklers went off. One sprinkler head was about 10 feet away. Out of it's nearly 360 degree field of rotation, guess exactly where it was pointing when it went off... Luckily the camera only got a glancing blow.

Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and the Moon

Tonight, the Moon passed close to Venus. Mercury was right on the horizon, too!

Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and the Moon

Here is a labeled version of the above image:

Meanwhile, in other parts of the sky:

Dark cloud after sunset

High cloud illuminated by the last rays of the sun after sunset, passing in front of the constellations Auriga, Lynx and Ursa Major.

The Planets, Plus One

Planets are tough to image. They are small, require a great deal of magnification, and often require filters to resolve fine details. Neither the ST80 nor the Epsilon-200 are suited for this purpose. The XT6 Dobsonian is pretty good at resolving planetary details visually for Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. There's not much to see when viewing Venus. Well, there is, but I haven't been able to see much.

I've come up with a trick, though, that lets me image some of the planets with my XT6 Dobsonian. Basically, I mount my Canon PowerShot A590 IS point-and-shoot camera afocally to a 9mm eyepiece (133X magnification). Then, I zoom in the camera to the highest optical zoom setting (4X). This gives me over 500X magnification. The target will move across the field of view very quickly. It takes a lot of work to get decent focus and to get the exposure time just right. The results are not outstanding, but hey, it's a cheap solution!

I've managed to image all eight of the planets, plus Pluto. (I'm not getting into a discussion as to whether or not Pluto is a planet!) Some images are simply shots of the sky, and some are close-up. Here they are in order from the Sun:

Mercury and Venus; DSLR on tripod; March 31, 2010

Venus; XT6; February 15, 2009

Because Venus orbits between us and the sun, we can see it go through phases similar to the moon. Venus is brightest in our skies when it is in a crescent or half phase because it is closer to us than at other times.

Earth; Dish Network; October 25, 2009

I meant it when I wrote "all eight planets!" The Dish Network satellite TV service has a channel called Dish Earth. It broadcasts a view of Earth from the Dish Network satellite in geostationary orbit 24 hours a day.

Mars; XT6; March 27, 2010

This image of Mars was taken about two months after the 2010 opposition. The lighter features at the top and bottom of the disc are the polar caps (north is at top). The darker feature near the bottom is called Tyrrhena Terra. It is a heavily cratered region that contains one of Mars' oldest volcanoes.

Jupiter, Io and Ganymede; XT6; July 4, 2009

The Great Red Spot is clearly visible here. The moons are, from left to right, are Io and Ganymede.

Saturn; XT6; April 02, 2009

This was my third, and best, attempt at imaging Saturn. One of the problems with trying to image with a telescope mounted on an alt-az base is that as objects move across the sky, they appear to rotate in the eyepiece. This effect was particularly pronounced with Saturn. The rings had "rotated" several degrees between the time I started imaging and the time that I stopped!

The following planets were all imaged with the Epsilon-200. The planets are far too small to render much detail within the E-200's field of view, though. My primary reason for imaging them was to simply say that I did it. Plus, I was hoping to catch a few moons, which I did!

Uranus and moons; E-200; July 17, 2010

Neptune and Triton; E-200; July 17, 2010

Pluto, near Barnard 92; E-200; July 17, 2010

Pluto passed in front of Barnard 92, a dark nebula, during mid-July 2010. Unfortunately, I missed that event.  I did catch Pluto, though, shortly after it had passed. It is right next to a star. It is easier to distinguish the two in the full-size image.