Mercury Transit

Hi everybody.

We all know what is happening on Monday 11th November 2019.
We are going to have a Transit of Mercury!
It starts at 12.35 UT.
And I'm setting up my William Optics 158 mm apochromatic refractor on top of a grassy mound across the road from my house.
My wife Valerie is joining me.
The weather seems reasonably promising.
So I should see some part of the transit before the Sun sets behind local houses at about 4 pm - give or take.

It will be my 3rd Mercury transit. It will be nice to make the hat trick!
I am viewing it by image projection and I'm perfectly happy with that.
I have an old 28 mm eyepiece which I will use.

Why not give it a go yourselves?
It is the last one until 2032.

Thank you very much.

Best regards and clear skies from Aubrey.

Yes the big day is here Aubrey. Glorious bright moon in the sky now but the forecast for Limerick is so-so. You might get luckier in the East. I'll zoom in x50 on a filtered camcorder and that should be enough if haze is absent. Missed out in 2016 but great memories of Venus in 2004. Clear skies!

Finbarr.

Hi Aubrey, 

Very many thanks for the 'heads-up'. And I hope you and your wife enjoy the event.

All going well I'm hoping to get out to the Papal Cross for the Mercury Transit  - there is a group of IAS members hosting a viewing for the general public. 

Clear skies, 

Darren. 

Hi,
 I (and my wife Sara) saw 1st and 2nd contact from Rush. Nice to see the tiny disc (high contrast) on the Sun. The poor seeing masked any accurate timings. 85 mm refractor used. Now clouds covering Sun, but gaps on horizon moving it.

Good luck with the weather.

John

At work, work, the curse of the astronomy classes, brought my 12x60 solar binoculars and have to dash out now and then to get a look.  The seeing conditions are not great, but I can clearly see the black dot of Mercury against the solar disk when seeing allows.

I missed first contact (I was looking at the wrong side of the sun like an idiot), but I did catch second and the black drop.  My wife said "it looks like a bullet hole in the sun".

I'm still in shock that the weather actually cleared for it....

Cheers,
Jeff.