My image has a CM of roughly 180, the map is orientated North so you have to rotate my image 180 degrees to make a comparison. As far as I can see the features are matching pretty well, so I think the dark zone near the terminator just south of the equator is real.
Just for your information, I changed my colour image of Mercury in this thread to a higher gamma, the terminator looks pretty straight so the details should be reasonable reliable. To be sure however I have to handsort 6000 frames, a thing I'll leave until after this apparition.
I put the SVST SixMaps.jpg version (Johan Warell's SVST images with Rehling's coordinates) next to my latest rough image of Mercury:
Thanks for the link Erwin. In fact I have already been using that image from the Swedish Vacuum Solar Telescope as a reference.
I've attached an image from this morning made up of R(G)B + I filters..still rough but the features appear consistent with those in your pic above with a little shifting in longitude of course.
My eye's are going square with all the image sorting and processing.:-)
After 3 mornings of rain and clouds I had another session this morning and finished up with 8000 frames. Everything look pretty well focused and exposed, a 300 frame stack shows already the crater ray system.
My computer is chewing on the data for the rest of the day, probably tonight I'll have the complete unsorted 8000 stack ready and can chuck everything on CD so I can empty the harddisk for the next session...
Which makes me wonder, I noticed that the unsorted stacks give results as sharp as frame selected stacks, only the unsorted one needs a bit more sharpening. I tried this a few times with Jupiter, and if I compare two separate images shot a few minutes apart the unsorted stacks show not only the same amount of detail as the sorted ones, but their detail is also more consistent.
With al these unsorted stacks of Mercury I start to notice the same thing, if I stack 60 very crappy frames together, Mercury's disk still shows up with a sharp edge, as long as the telescope is exactly focused.
I'm hoping to try and grab Mercury tomorrow morning - it's been clear most mornings this week, but it hadn't risen high enough by the time I needed to leave for work. Tomorrow morning = no work, but the weather is also predicted to take a turn for the worse this afternoon/tonight.
Here's the unsorted stack of 8000 frames made this morning.
Looks familiar?
The big spot just above the centre is a big crater ray system, in both Steve's as well as my image it shows up blue, which indicates fresher material brought up from deeper layers!
Cheers,
Last edited by ErwinvdVelden; 30-04-2005 at 01:42 AM.
Thanks for posting the latest image Erwin. It looks good and adds credence to the exciting possibility that there may be a large ray crater at that longitude. More confirmation images are certainly required however. I did some imaging this morning but the seeing was really poor compared to earlier runs and not really worth the processing effort at this time. I certainly doubt I'd be able to make out the bright spot in them.
I understand there is a U.S team that will be using the IRTF at Mauna Kea from today until the 5th of May using a mid infrared spectral imager so hopefully something to confirm our suspicions may turn up from that.
In the meantime any more images we can get (including anyone else in this forum or elsewhere) will be really useful.
Don't feel too disheartened guys..the other morning I'd stayed up all night and took the attached Mars snapshot in preparation to check the status of the general seeing which was looking good. As the Sun began to rise and I had Mercury nicely focussed ready to start imaging, a strip of cloud running North to south-east developed right across the rising path of Mercury while there were huge clear skies everywhere else.
Yes, that strip of cloud could have formed anywhere else across our vast sky but today it was going to ensure I didn't take any pictures of Mercury. Even as Mercury rose higher, so too did the annoying strip of cloud and it even grew thicker. Since then it's been either poor seeing or cloudy skies.
Went out to image Mercury this morning, but there was clouds.. on my drive to work the clouds went away and by the time I was at work, it was beautiful and clear and Mercury was just staring at me, taunting me
Oh well, maybe tomorrow
Also, Mars was quite close to the moon at about 3am this morning, would've made for a nice shot.
Did another seesion with bad seeing this morning and intermittent clouds. Currently there is a blowing South-easterly, but at least it's better than the last few days. Here's the 6003 frame stack, but I need a confirmation tomorrow morning. Sorry about the weird colour, I'll correct that with the final processing.
Very nice Erwin.. another cloudy morning for me here.. I don't know what it is.. get up, check the weather, cloudy.. come to work, by the time I get to work, clear.
It's very annoying.. i'm just going to have to start later tomorrow.
Finally had a clear morning, so as promised here's my Mercury. Also as promised, it's nothing compared to yours and Steve's.
The seeing was shocking, 3/10, and my image sacle is just so small at 3000mm FL with a 2.4x barlow. Mercury was only at 19deg elevation, so the individual frames have horrible atmospheric refraction as you can see by the single frame in the image below. Thank goodness for Registax RGB shift!
Details:
- 10" dob with ToUcam
- 5th May 2005, 5:45am
- 10 fps
- 1/33s, 0 gain
Out of 653 frames, only 3 were worth stacking @ 95% quality. Is there any special (coloured?) filter you use for Mercury to make it stand out more against the ever increasing blue background as the sun rises?
Anyway, it's my first ever image of Mercury and it clearly shows a phase, so I'm happy
Congratulations Mike, especially if your Dob hasn't any drive!
Seeing gets much better when you wait until Mercury is upto 30 degrees, and the dispersion will also be much less.
I tried myself this morning, the clouds were too numerous to get a good shot.
Yesterday I got 6 minutes through a suckerhole filled with thin clouds, and got some confirmation of the much sharper image made the day before.
Well done Mike...this is what it's all about...Having a go and you've done a real nice job for a first attempt at Mercury. God knows my first attempt in 1995 as a shocker compared to your first result.
Lot's more to be done over the next few weeks guys so get those webcams going and post your results.
I had another session this morning and finished up with 8000 frames. Everything look pretty well focused and exposed, a 300 frame stack shows already the crater ray system. 
clouds! Drive me absolutely nuts! Tomorrow maybe before I go to work.
