Sun-Mercury Transit of 2006
Click Image for a Movie
Every couple of years, the planet Mercury passes in front of the Sun as seen from Earth. On November 8, 2006, this event was visible from the Western hemisphere, though the full 5-hour event was only visible in its entirety from West of the Western U.S. I photographed it using my solar filter. I took images every minute from 12:13-12:20, and then every 5 minutes after that until the Sun set in Boulder at 3:40.
The above collage shows the tiny disk of Mercury entering the limb of the Sun below a (somewhat more interesting) large Sunspot. Mercury appears as a small spot 1/200th the size of the Sun, and the full transit lasted about 5 hours.
Clicking on the image will take you to a movie that I put together of the event. Be fore-warned: The movie is 1.9 MB and may take some time to download. Also, it will play through once rather slowly, but then it should speed up (it will loop through).
| Object | Sun with Mercury Transiting |
| Common Name | Sun and Mercury |
| Date, Time, & Moon | November 8, 2006; N/A |
| Location | SBO Telescope at CU Boulder |
| Optics | 1000 mm lens; f/16 |
| Camera | Canon Digital Rebel 350D XT |
| Exposure Details | 5 stacked 1/250 sec exposures for each frame; ISO 100 |
| Optical Correction | No Dark- nor Flatframe-Correction |
| Camera Position | Normal camera operation. |
| Guiding | Passive Clock Drive |
| Processing Details | IDL - Image stacking PhotoShop CS - Sharpened images ImageReady CS - Aligned frames and cropped |
| Image Size | Sun is 30 arcmin in diameter |
| Magnitude Depth | Sun is magnitude -26.5 as seen from Earth |
| Notes | My first observed transit! |