Images of Mercury & Venus from 2003 & 2004

Dennis · #1 22-10-2006, 07:33 AM

Hello,

I dug up a couple of old images of the Mercury Transit of May 2003 and the Venus Transit of June 2004 and overlaid them to compare the sizes of the planetary discs against the Sun. Both images are severely vignetted as I was using a consumer Minolta DiMage 7Hi afocally. It is quite an interesting size comparison.

Cheers

Dennis

iceman (Mike) · #2 22-10-2006, 07:44 AM

Wow Dennis, a very interesting comparison. It's going to be much more difficult to see this time around.

No (filter protected) naked eye views unfortunately

[1ponders] (Paul) · #3 22-10-2006, 08:48 AM

Yep it will be a challenge, the ol' Mercury is not much bigger than the moon, only a thousand or so kms in it. (4880 V 3500 approx)

sheeny (Al) · #4 22-10-2006, 09:01 AM

Thanks Dennis! I hadn't really thought about it but I think I was expecting Mercury to appear a bit larger then that, so it will help to have an idea of just how small it will be when the time comes.

Wouldn't it be disappointing to be looking for a larger disc only to find that 1st contact is over before you found it!

Al.

sheeny (Al) · #5 22-10-2006, 09:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by [1ponders]

Yep it will be a challenge, the ol' Mercury is not much bigger than the moon, only a thousand or so kms in it. (4880 V 3500 approx)

I didn't realise it is so close to the Raleigh Criteria for the PST (2995 km)!

Hmmm... should the plan be, then, to use max magnification in the PST? Say a 5 or 6mm EP or a barlow/powermate?

Al.

jjjnettie (Jeanette) · #6 22-10-2006, 01:53 PM

Gee it's small isn't it.