Here Comes the Sun

The last 8 days have been bleak and blurry because of the lack of sunshine. It has been a very cold spring where it has been near or close to raining almost every day. I had to move/cancel 2 of my first 3 rides.

Today however we had glorious warm sunshine and I was off from work. I took today off in hopes of seeing the transit of Mercury. This is when Mercury goes across the sun when viewed from earth. This happens about once every 12 years although the time between transits varies a lot. You can see more details on Mercury transits here. Having a transit in May is rare and this particular transit was a very long one over 7 hours so there were a lot of opportunities to see it. It started at 7:12 am so I had to go out to a field to see it since the trees by my house block the sun until around 9am. I ended up on Herbert Road and with clear skies I was able to see the moment Mercury touched the edge of the sun which is the coolest part. When Mercury crosses into the sun it produces a teardrop affect which I saw clearly. I also got a picture of it although it is very bury because I don't have the equipment to get a clear picture at that magnification, trust me it was a lot clearer in though the eyepiece.

 Here is what is looked like in a good telescope in an observatory in the UK.

I am casually into astronomy so I don't have a lot invested. I bought a small telescope about 15 years ago and it allows me to see some of the easy things in the day and night sky.

I stayed at Herbert Rd for about an hour taking pictures. I took pictures with my IPod Touch using a special holder that I built that allows me to align it and attach it to the eyepiece of the telescope. This worked really well.

I was back home by 9 am and set up the telescope in the backyard to watch the rest of the transit. I went out every half hour to take a few pictures. You can see my full set of pictures here.

My clearest picture was near mid transit which is the one at the top.Unfortunately the clouds returned around noon so I wasn't able to see the end of the transit but it was nice to to be able to see most if it.  

Here is the last picture I got around 12:30 pm. You can see Mercury at the bottom right half of the sun. Its about 3/4 of the way across. The black spot in the middle is a sunspot.

 

Here is a close up clearly showing Mercury. Its easy to tell it apart from sunspots since it is perfectly round. 

For people who don't care about astronomy staring at a dot on the sun may not sound interesting but it was a fun day for me.