iceman
13-11-2006, 08:00 AM
Hi guys.
The Mercury transit for me was a frustrating experience, as I couldn't get the images I wanted.
The entire transit, with the exception of about 15 minuets, was affected by clouds. Most of that time with blanket cloud so I couldn't even see the sun at all, and the remainder of the time we had thick high cloud passing.. it was thin enough that I could get an image, but frustrating enough that it played havoc with the exposure times, and I couldn't even get a 10 second avi without the exposure needed changing from 1/90s to 1/300s, and that was with gain at maximum on the DMK. So the image went from bright white to mottled (thanks to clouds) in the space of a second.
I also couldn't use my dob, because the focal length (> 2500mm) was too much for the conditions, as wind constantly buffeted the scope and was shaking it around. Image 1 is the only image I got out of my dob.
So I moved to h0ughy's 5" mak on his EQ6, and put my DMK in there. The focal length was less, and the mount was more stable thanks to the shorter scope on top. The clouds weren't any less frustrating though, so each avi had very little stackable frames.
No single image is worth posting after the brilliant images by others, so I decided an animation might do. There's 2 animations below, one centered on the sunspot group and one centered on Mercury.
Certainly not the smooth detailed hi-res images I was hoping to get, but at least I saw it and captured something of it.
Animation centered on sunspot (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/downloads/mercury-transit-spot.gif) (1.2mb animated gif)
Animation centered on Mercury (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/downloads/mercury-transit-mercury.gif) (1.2mb animated gif)
The last image is of sunspot 923 again through h0ughy's mak at the end of the session after Mercury had gone off.
Thanks for looking.
The Mercury transit for me was a frustrating experience, as I couldn't get the images I wanted.
The entire transit, with the exception of about 15 minuets, was affected by clouds. Most of that time with blanket cloud so I couldn't even see the sun at all, and the remainder of the time we had thick high cloud passing.. it was thin enough that I could get an image, but frustrating enough that it played havoc with the exposure times, and I couldn't even get a 10 second avi without the exposure needed changing from 1/90s to 1/300s, and that was with gain at maximum on the DMK. So the image went from bright white to mottled (thanks to clouds) in the space of a second.
I also couldn't use my dob, because the focal length (> 2500mm) was too much for the conditions, as wind constantly buffeted the scope and was shaking it around. Image 1 is the only image I got out of my dob.
So I moved to h0ughy's 5" mak on his EQ6, and put my DMK in there. The focal length was less, and the mount was more stable thanks to the shorter scope on top. The clouds weren't any less frustrating though, so each avi had very little stackable frames.
No single image is worth posting after the brilliant images by others, so I decided an animation might do. There's 2 animations below, one centered on the sunspot group and one centered on Mercury.
Certainly not the smooth detailed hi-res images I was hoping to get, but at least I saw it and captured something of it.
Animation centered on sunspot (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/downloads/mercury-transit-spot.gif) (1.2mb animated gif)
Animation centered on Mercury (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/downloads/mercury-transit-mercury.gif) (1.2mb animated gif)
The last image is of sunspot 923 again through h0ughy's mak at the end of the session after Mercury had gone off.
Thanks for looking.