Mercury Transits the Sun
11/15/1999

Some great sunspots are visible, and Mercury barely makes a dent in the edge. This was taken at prime focus on my 10" f/6.3 Meade LX200 with a Thousand Oaks Type II+ solar filter, Fuji 800 film, 1/60 second exposure. The zenith is up, and the view is correct (the SCT flips the image L/R, I flipped it back in Photoshop). This was taken at 11/15/99 21:20 UTC from the Fort Worth Astronomical Society's site northwest of Fort Worth, Texas.

Mercury on the limb of the Sun – a very small dot. For comparison, the equatorial diameter of the Sun is 286 times that of Mercury. But don't feel big – it's also 109 times as big as the Earth. In other words, Earth viewed this way would be only 2.6 times larger than Mercury – still just a dot, especially compared to the sunspots in the top photo. One of my first decent eyepiece projection shots, this was taken through a Meade 15 Super Plossl eyepiece in a Meade Basic Camera Adapter attached to my 10" f/6.3 Meade LX200 with a Thousand Oaks Type II+ solar filter. Fuji 800 film, 1/60 second exposure, taken at 11/15/1999 21:45 UTC from the FWAS site. Zenith is up and the view is correct.