Mercury at 1.001AU, 9th October

[von Tom]

Ivan's fantastic image of Mercury (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=112955) inspired me to have a go at the planet last night. I used a 52mm Hoya R72 IR filter, placed inside the focus tube, and a full spectrum Canon EOS 600D with 5x Powermate on the 12" Dobsonian for a minute of crop video and heaps of USM in Photoshop to get this image.

To be honest I am not sure what I am getting here is actual planet detail or artefacts in the processing.

Thanks for looking,

Tom

[lepton3]

Tom,

Great image, and it's good to see this small and fickle planet getting so much attention!

You have captured some subtle albedo features which I think do correspond to the Winjupos render for the time, if you scale and gaussian blur the winjupos image to about 10 pixels radius.

For all attempting to capture surface detail on Mercury, have a look at the latest Winjupos, it has the messenger map as a surface texture and is supposed to have an accurate ephemeris.

-Ivan

[John Hothersall]

That's a very nice catch, don't know how you manage it with all the wind about.

John.

[EricB]

Nice one Tom :thumbsup:

Eric

[Ric]

A nice capture Tom.

Its not often we see images of Mercury

[Lee]

Awesome shot Tom...

[AG Hybrid]

Well that's pretty damn impression frankly. Very well done sir.