[StuTodd]

A "hands up" to equipment box left on the driveway, cable on the kitchen shelf etc.

Personally, I have had 3 disasters in just this year, after 39 years of visual observing of Solar System events, I'm slipping.

The April 25th Saturn occultation by the Moon was hampered by talking to members of the public and not getting the EQ6 even dialled in for the disappearance, you can guess the result of the reappearance.

Novembers occultation was more successful, got a nice crowd of Dunedin Astronomical Society members at the dark sky site (very close to Radagast the Brown's chase) and viewed the disappearance on a laptop screen.

Dialled in on the point below Mare Crisium, I had perfect focus and position and tracking. As 21.46 rolled by followed by "wow"s" and "ooh, looks amazing", my laptop screen was blank apart from a lovely lunar limb. I had under-exposed the planet by a lot.

I ripped the DMK off the C9.25 and put an EP in, focussed and wow, I had the best visual view of all the scopes we had there, from 8" to 18" dobs, plus a C11. The C9.25 was singing, the view amazing but not of the actual event.

So here I am now having looked at my paltry 5 frames of the Mercury transit. I deleted them. We had 56 minutes of the event from sunrise to end here on the South Island and what an eye-opener it was.

I was on a windy headland on Cape Saunders having had 2 hours sleep after a bad night shift. Me and the pacific ocean for company, the first mainland landfall of the new day. And an epiphany hit me.

I closed the laptop, the wrestling with software was gone. The forgotten EQ6 power cable didn't matter. I just simply observed the planet crossing the face of our Star with my own eyes.

That last 10 minutes will stay with me forever.