1st go at imaging Mercury

I took a bunch of avi's back in February of Venus and Mercury and
out of the lot I managed to get one good 2min capture of Venus outa which
I got a nice image. The disk was almost full but you could just still make
out the phase.
In that bunch I had dismissed all the Mercury Avi's as rubbish.
After a visit to Dave Lillis one evening I realised I wasn't using Registax
properly at all.....and to make matters worse...I never kept any of
my old Saturn / Moon Avi's! :evil:

But just the other night I found the old Mercury Avi's I thought I had dumped.
So, with a better understanding of how to get the most out of it I processed
the best one of them.

Here is what came out....I'm pretty pleased with it....
I used a Philips SPC9000 webcam, 2XApo Barlow, IR cut filter, ETX-125 and a whole
lot of teeth grinding to try and focus anything other than a spectrum of light on the screen.

I'm have to admit again, Registax is just simply black magic.

I think you got a great result there Frank, Mercury would not be easiest of objects to capture due to it's low altitude. The gibbous phase is clearly seen and I like the outcome.

I'm sure some photo heads will now come on and suggest ways to improve it

Paul

I actually can't remember seeing a phase of Venus before! The times I have seen it (telescopically or whatever) it was always 'full' practically. Your avi image captured the gibbous phase very well. Well done.

Good stuff Frank,!
Mercury's phase is easily visible there, this is a tough planet to get, it's usually very low and is tiny compared to the likes of Venus.