Gotcha!
Posted: Mon May 09, 2016 9:23 pmSo lil' old Mercury was walking along the face of the Sun today.
I schlepped around 50 kg of equipment to the rooftop terrace, assembled my old 8" Newton, barked at the daughter for making everything shake by her constant hopping, had at least two nervous breakdowns when things didn't work (which they did frequently: I've lost practice, and they've lost their edge. I blame it on too many kids), and yet, I watched the Mercury transit, so did my older kids, and I got the pics to prove it. That's actual sunspots right of center of the disk, penumbra and all, not smudges on the optics). The exit period of the transit coincided with our local sunset (transit map here), and we could relly juuuust see Mercury disappear from a flattened, red disk of the Sun moments before it disappeared below the horizon. Dramatic footage of Sun-behind-trees below.
When the Sun was gone, a 3 1/2 day young Moon joined the scene, and I took a picture of that, too. The son explained to me his impressions of craters and central mountains, of the smoothness of Mare Crisium, and how excited he was to see something at 100x magnification. It was a glorious evening. I don't know where the central smudge of light originated. Probably a combination of misaligned mirrors, dust on the main, lots of it, sloppy application of glassware at the eyepiece, and my general fuckuppery at a delicate hobby I have been letting slip in the past decade.
I schlepped around 50 kg of equipment to the rooftop terrace, assembled my old 8" Newton, barked at the daughter for making everything shake by her constant hopping, had at least two nervous breakdowns when things didn't work (which they did frequently: I've lost practice, and they've lost their edge. I blame it on too many kids), and yet, I watched the Mercury transit, so did my older kids, and I got the pics to prove it. That's actual sunspots right of center of the disk, penumbra and all, not smudges on the optics). The exit period of the transit coincided with our local sunset (transit map here), and we could relly juuuust see Mercury disappear from a flattened, red disk of the Sun moments before it disappeared below the horizon. Dramatic footage of Sun-behind-trees below.
When the Sun was gone, a 3 1/2 day young Moon joined the scene, and I took a picture of that, too. The son explained to me his impressions of craters and central mountains, of the smoothness of Mare Crisium, and how excited he was to see something at 100x magnification. It was a glorious evening. I don't know where the central smudge of light originated. Probably a combination of misaligned mirrors, dust on the main, lots of it, sloppy application of glassware at the eyepiece, and my general fuckuppery at a delicate hobby I have been letting slip in the past decade.