Mercury Transit

Being an Amateur astronomer I could not resist today's transit of Mercury across the face of the sun. I was up at sunrise to see if it would be possible to see it. Good thing I did get up early because by mid morning the clouds were moving in and I would have missed it completely. Anywho, I used the projection method through a 3" refractor (all lenses, no mirror) to see it. I took a sheet of green card stock, cut a hole in the center and slipped it over the end with the eyepiece to act as a shield that would produce a shadow to make the projected image easier to see. I used a second bright white cards stock to act as the projection screen. I held it behind the telescope and focused the image onto it then took a bunch of pictures of the projected sun image. Here is the result.

It turned out pretty good considering there way a Breeze building. It made the scope vibrate and the card stock was hard to keep still. It later became impossible. 

The image is actually horizontally reversed. The Blue oval circles highlight Sunspots that were captured and the Round black circle highlights Mercury on the face of the sun. It will be several years before this happens again. This is the best of five pictures taken. Shortly afterwards the clouds were too thick to get any more images. 

By using a projection screen I was able to see the detail on the sun. NEVER view the sun without protection. It is advised that you never view the sun directly through a telescope or binoculars unless you have a proper sun filter attached to the front of your instrument. Never use an eyepiece filter as the heat generated will crack the filter and could result in blindness. Due to Mercury's small size the only way to see Mercury was through a telescope.

Hope you like what I managed to capture. Remember to always Love The Details. God Bless.