Mercury Transit

I took Veteran's Day off this year because of a unique event taking place.  This is the Mercury transit.  The last one was May 2016 and the next one wont be until Nov 2032.  The Mercury transit is when the planet mercury crosses in front of the Sun from our view point.  This transit started around 5:30 AM mountain time before the Sun came up.  I wasn't able to see the Sun until 7:45.  I got to the site at 6:15 and finished setting my equipment up by 7:00.  I brought my 12 inch dob, 4 inch refractor, and my binoculars all with solar filters.  The one for my dob I bought but the others I made with eclipse glasses.  I took my first picture at 8:00 with the refractor.  I took pictures every 20 minutes. At 9:30 my laptop battery ran down and I didn't have another supply for it so I ended up with 5 sets of 90 pictures.  I stacked the subs in Autostackkart and then did a final composite stack in Pixinsight to give me this single photo of Mercury trans-versing the Sun.  I kept observing Mercury as it passed the Sun.  As it got close to the edge and left it became dim and elongated in my eyepiece.


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