Monthly Archives: May 2016

2016-05-09 Mercury Transit

Mercury transited the face of the Sun on May 9th.  The entire event was visible from the east coast of the United States, but on the west coast where I am the event had already started at Sunrise and was over by about noon.

I happened to be travelling at the time, so I was unable to photograph the event with my hydrogen alpha setup.  Instead I rented a Canon 100-400mm lens and 2x teleconverter to which I attached a 77mm filter with some Baader solar film.  Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my tripod on the trip (left it right next to the door..yeah!), so I had to rely on the image stabilization and resting the lens on the roof of my car.  I got a couple half decent shots of Mercury with a nice patch of sunspots.

 

2016-05-09 Mercury transit of the Sun with sunspots in white lig 2016-05-09 Mercury transit of the Sun with sunspots in white lig 2016-05-09 Mercury transit of the Sun with sunspots in white lig

The darker spot in the lower right is Mercury.