Astronomy

Transit of Mercury May 7th 2003

After overnight rain, the skies cleared over Liverpool to allow some good views of this fairly rare event. The images below were taken of the projected image of the sun using the 14" f5.2 stopped to 3" f25. 6mm Orthoscopic eyepiece used for projection. The camera used was a Coolpix 885 on auto, close-up setting. Images processed in Photoshop.

Dave Galvin took these excellent images:

"I have selected two pictures from the series that I took on transit day. They were imaged with the SX MX7C CCD camera through my Orion Optics 8 inch f6 reduced to 2 inch with a Mylar filter giving an f. ratio of F24 . Due to cloud on the day I had to juggle the exposures from 8/1000 sec to 1 sec. Mercury was so black when compared to the adjacent spot. Just like the text books say!"