Weather forecast was for 100% high cloud on Monday, the last transit of Mercury until 2032. Yikes, usually a forecast like that is bad news - no chance at astrophotography. But when you are imaging a small black dot crossing the face of the sun, high clouds, if thin, are not a real problem. So the gear went out and I was able to capture most of the event.
First contact was around 7:40 am but due to the topography of my property the sun was not visible at that time. It wasn't until 8:26 am before the sun climbed sufficiently to peek out behind my garage/workshop and the southeastern tree line. I had some initial problems with getting the software up and running. Actually, it is a long story - I didn't decide to use my Canon 50D as the primary still camera until that morning and it turned out that the licenses to both my software applications that I use when imaging through the 50D had expired. The last time I used them was during the total solar eclipse of 2017. By the time I downloaded the new versions and paid for the upgrades it was almost 9:00.
But I finally did get everything up and running, although for some reason (still unknown) the mount was not able to keep the sun centered in the sensor of the camera and so I had to re-adjust every 20 minutes or so which made post-processing a nightmare.
Here is a single sub from the Canon. The sunspot-bare sun makes it easy to find the planet - the small black dot just left of center.
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| Transit of Mercury - November 11, 2019 9:12 a.m. GT102 f/5.5 Canon 50D 1/1000 sec ISO 200 |
The whole session has been captured on a YouTube video on my channel which you can view via this link: Transit
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