Mercury - April elongation

[lepton3]

Mercury is just a couple of days from greatest elongation west. Here's an image I captured this morning at about 7am.

This is with a C11 + #25R filter + TV 3x Barlow + DMK21AU04.AS camera. 1800 frames out of 12000 stacked with AS!2.

-Ivan

[von Tom]

That's a nice smooth Mercury Ivan, with a hint of detail. Cloudy here in Brisbane - thanks for posting it.

Tom

[Matt Wastell]

That is pretty crisp! Thanks for the Mercury view. Can you actually capture broad features with your set up?

[Shiraz]

really hard target and an excellent result Ivan - congrats. regards Ray

[lepton3]

Thanks Tom, I was pleased to get some detail other than just the phase.



Glad you liked it Matt. The broad details on Mercury are pretty low contrast. In ideal conditions with specialized gear, amateurs have imaged them but you need to image when Mercury is high in the sky (i.e. in broad sunlight), so you need to deal with your scope tube heating up etc. I have seen photos of a carbon fibre C9.25 with large sections of the tube cut out!

However there are some bright craters which I think contribute to the "orange peel" surface effect you see on this image.



Thanks Ray, yes really only a viable target near the elongations. Worth getting up at 6am for.

-Ivan

[prokyon]

Wow, a stunning Mercury, one of the best I have ever seen! :thumbsup:

[luigi]

Fantastic Mercury photo, amazing that it was taken from earth!
Congrats!

[ballaratdragons]

Professional Astronomers may as well throw their Huge Mountain Top telescopes away!

The excellent images taken by Amateurs are growing by leaps and bounds!

Very nice work Ivan :)

[lepton3]

Thank you Werner!



Thanks Luigi. Now that Messenger is in orbit at Mercury we will be getting some more space based images.



Thank you Ken. A large part is the advances in cameras and stacking software. I must buy Emil K. (Autostakkert!2) a beer!

-Ivan

[luigi]

This also helps me to know what CAN be done with Mercury, I'll try to photogrpah it tomorrow or thursday if weather permits and I'm ok just getting the phase visible. It's really good to have a reference.