- 13:25:59 Mark Wagner
-
Just took my 10" f/5.6 Dob out back and put the solar filter over it.
With a 10.5 mm eyepiece, I could see one very round black spot on the
solar limb, and many large normal (irregular) spots parading across the
disc. It is amazing to see a planet transit the sun.... really gives a
great idea of the size of the sun and sunspots!
I think I got lucky here in Los Gatos, the sky was cloudy up until about
1/2 hour ago.
Back out for more! I hope some of you others are able to catch a view
too.
- 13:40:45 Bob Czerwinski
-
Just too cool!! Headin' back out myself!
- 13:39:17 Phil Chambers
-
Yahoo, after a series of false starts lately, the rain took a break, the
clouds went away, and I am successfully taping the Mercury transit as I
type.
I can see clouds to the east and west but overhead is clear.
Yeah, I know, its just a dot on the sun but There It Is!!!
- 14:56:33 Chucky Shinn
-
Hacksaw Freeman would have been proud! Mercury was a delight in the little
Questar. Absolutely wonderful experience here in Dallas.
- 15:23:56 David Kingsley
-
I just got back from a week long seminar trip to London, saw the gloomy
weather report for today, and felt too jet-lagged last night to build a
cell for the Baader Solar film material I ordered from Astrophysics a few
weeks ago. It was partly sunny here in Palo Alto this morning though, so I
dashed home at lunch, quickly emptied and dusted a Quaker Oatmeal can,
covered it with the film, and slipped the whole thing over a Televue Ranger
about 1:30 pm. Great view of both the mercury transit and a bunch of
sunspots. Glad I caught the transit and I particularly enjoyed the
contrast between the sharp black dot of the planet and the large ragged
appearance of the sunspots.
Free oatmeal at the next star party if anyone is interested.
- 16:22:00 John Gleason
-
Just back from Willow Glen High School where Marsha Robinson and me
observed the Mercury transit in the Solaris hydrogen alpha telescope.
Under very clear conditions, we were both surprised at the clarity and
size of Mercury. The sun was beautiful, ringed with a host of
prominences and a very large grouping of sunspots on the solar equator
with Mercury a wonderful little black "period" at twelve o'clock.
Near the end of the transit, you could glimpse Mercury hanging in the
solar chromisphere, just slightly above the photosphere. Then it was
gone.
Of particular note, was the blackness of the planetary dot as compared
to the color of the sunspots. The sunspots were more gray-black, as
opposed to the harsh black silhouette of Mercury.
This was my first ever planet transit and more exciting then I would
have thought. Maybe it was the company too. :-)
- 16:28:04 Jay Reynolds Freeman
-
Some of us at Houge Park thought Mercury looked like the hole punched in
the Sun to hang it up on the sky...
- 16:36:37 Rich Neuschaefer
-
Houge Park had several observers for the Mercury transit.
I took the AP 130 EDT refractor and put a piece of the Baader
filter film over the due cap with a rubber band. The Baader
film works great. When the seeing was good I could see
solar granulation. The lighter parts of the sunspots showed
fine structure. The large sunspot groups were very interesting.
I used the binoviewer most of the time.
A woman tried taking some photos throught the scope. A few
were through the eyepiece and others were without a diagonal
straight through the scope (through her camera lens).
Mercury looked like a small hole punched in the disc of the
sun. Jay Freeman said that's the hole used to hang the sun
in the sky.
- 16:36:53 James Ferreira
-
I was fortunate to find some breaks in the clouds here in Livermore and was
able to catch a little more than half of the Mercury transit on video. I
have posted a mosaic image at
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/canterbury/222/theplanets.htm. I'm
pretty thrilled with what I got. I used a 6" Mak with a full aperture
Baader filter and an Astrovid 2000. Turned out to be a nice combination.
Unfortunately, since I was so busy with my own video, I missed the live
feeds that others were going to post. Hope some of you saved some images
to share.
- 17:41:55 Steve Gottlieb
-
I brought my 10-inch f/5.6 Orion dob to Newark-Memorial High School (in your
neck of the woods), set up in the main courtyard and wow'd several classes of
math and science students. The huge sunspot complex really drove home their
amazing size compared to a planet. I was also surprised how crisp the
silhouette of Mercury appeared compared to its typical murky appearance.
- 18:43:52 William B. Phelps
-
I went to Palo Alto Baylands and set up for h-alpha. Haven't had time
to process all the image yet, but here's one composite of 2 exposures,
one long to get the prominences and one short to get the disk...
http://www.meier-phelps.com/solar/991115-140150a1.jpg
- 19:38:25 Bob Czerwinski
-
Observing with my TV-101 and an Orion glass solar filter from the patio area
of my company's Santa Clara building, I, too, was quite surprised by both
the size and the clarity/crispness of the planet against the sun's disk.
The hole-punch description definitely fits. The differences between the
"darkness" of the sunspots and the absolute "blackness" of the planet were
wonderful to observe. My pre-event jitters about about planet size and
magnification issues vanished as soon as initial ingress was made. I stuck
with 77x (a Pentax SMC 7mm) virtually the entire time, but missed the egress
events. I was curious to see if I could spot the planet against the corona
on exterior egress, but a 2:00pm meeting kept me away from the eyepiece. I
saw nothing against the corona prior to spotting exterior ingress. Maybe
twice the magnification would have helped here.
So now it's on to Venus in 2004, right? Could someone with a planetarium
program handy check and see if the event is positioned for a Californian
ingress and egress? (Hey, I can dream, can't I? )