Transit of Mercury

[ffutures]

There's a transit of Mercury - Mercury crossing the face of the Sun - on Monday 9th, from 11.12 UT (GMT) - 12.02 British Summer Time - until 18.42 UT - 19.42 BST, mid-point at 14.57 UT, 15.42 BST. This is too small to see with the naked eye, if you use any form of magnification you should take all precautions as for an eclipse. The icon shows a transit of Venus, which was much easier to see from Earth. The final image was unfortunately taken with the camera slightly tilted.

Full details here:

http://www.nakedeyeplanets.com/mercury-transit-2016.htm

Comments

[nelc.livejournal.com]

The local astronomy club will have some telescopes out in the Town Hall gardens, I expect. Here's hoping for some fine weather.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I might try to do something with my 500mm mirror lens and a mylar filter, as I did with the transit of Venus, but I suspect it isn't up to resolving something that small - the lens I had then was better but alas not convertible to Nikon mount. Maybe adding a 2x converter, but I think the image will be too soft. Or use a camera lens to focus an image of the sun onto paper, but again probably too small.