Mercury Transit

Skies cleared from 12.55-13.15 here in south Limerick and there she was, 3 arcminutes onto the Sun's surface and 1/194th the diameter. Pretty dang cool



Finbarr.

Hi,

The cloud and rain were off and on, but some clear spells.  Image through my 85 mm refractor at 12:49 UT. The seeing at this low altitude was poor. Mercury is the small disc at left.



John

One of the best transits I have ever seen!!
I thank you all for sending in each of your reports.
Hearty congratulations to those of you who took the time to publish the most spectacular images.
Irish astronomy must be at an all time high!

It took some time for me to put my William Optics 158 mm f/7 apochromatic refractor into the back of my car in bright sunshine.
I was only planning to crawl around one corner to set up my equipment on a grassy mound.
My wife Valerie joined me opposite some neighbours' houses and we viewed Mercury transiting our Sun for 1.5 hours.
We used a large A2 pad for our image projection scheme and that pad was placed on my Berlebach observing chair.
My very old 28 mm 1.25" RKE eyepiece behaved brilliantly throughout. The Sun was constantly shining right through it when we had sunshine.
We finally were ready at 12.39 exactly.
We only missed the first 3 minutes; but Mercury was a tiny but full black disc on the chromosphere.
Eventually 2 ladies appeared not knowing what was going on.
Then another lady with 3 children and a dog called Scout joined us.
We observed the transit until precisely 3 pm when the Sun with Mercury was still on the face of the Sun.
At that point our nearest star went behind one of the aforementioned houses.
But we went home very happy.
Thankfully that was just around the corner.

Here are my figures for this extraordinary event:

Weather temperature: 5 degrees C. (In South Dublin)
Mercury magnitude: +6.7.
Distance from Earth: 101,000,000 kms.
Angular Diameter: 10",
True Diameter: 4878 kms.

There were no sunspots or solar flares.

Thank you for reading. 

Aubrey. 

flt158 wrote: There were no sunspots or solar flares.

I did notice (in h-alpha) that the chromosphere was impressively uniform and quiet.

Cheers,
Jeff.

Yes, Jeff. 
The Sun was extremely large on my A2 pad. 
The tiny disc of Mercury had very sharp focus. 
I had no problems in that regard. 

Hydrogen Alpha filters are the business. 
Well done!

By the way, Jeff, where did you observe the transit? (What location?) 
I'm just wondering. 

Aubrey. 

County Louth, near Dunleer.

I've a "post" in the grass outside my observatory that I use for solar: