| . Mercury Transit 2006 Note: All images are copyrighted by the photographer, Bart Benjamin. This page was last updated on November 9, 2007. |
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| Mercury's first contact with the sun's limb is indicated by the arrow. | In this image, Mercury is at second contact, not far from a very large sunspot group on the southeastern limb of the sun. | This image was taken less than two minutes after second contact. |
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| With the sun only a few degrees above the horizon, Mercury approaches third contact. Atmospheric seeing was very poor, making it difficult to discern the final stages of the transit. | In this full-disk solar-filtered camcorder image, the large sunspot is easily seen at the far left limb and Mercury is far less visible below and to the left of the sun's center. | Close-up of the large sunspot and surrounding faculae that were visible throughout the November 8th Mercury Transit. |
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Equipment:
Video was obtained with an AVA
PlanetCam attached to a Questar 3.5” telescope (with full aperture
Questar solar filter) and recorded on a Sony
Hi8
camcorder. (See left and right photographs). The camcorder-only image
above was taken with a Sony Hi8 camcorder outfitted with a 2x
tele-conversion
lens and Thousand Oaks solar filter. In all cases, still photos were
then captured
with an Instant
DVD+DV unit and edited with VideoStudio 7.0 software. Ten frames per
image
were aligned and stacked by RegiStax 4 software to create the finished
images.
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My observing location was
the Community College of
Southern Nevada's student observatory in
North Las Vegas, Nevada. My thanks to Dr. Dale Etheridge
(Planetarium Director), Robert Pippin (Production Manager), and the college's AV staff for their
assistance and hospitality.
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