tirsdag 10. mai 2016

Mercury transit May 9th

I put up my Lunt 35mm h-alpha telescope and plugged in my camera to film this event. The weather was magnificent. With temperatures in the high 20's (C), and only a few thin clouds scattered across the otherwise blue skies. I left early from work that day to make sure I had time to set up my gear at the roof of my apartment block.
I spent almost 9 hours up there. Only going down to my apartment to get something to drink or eat, or when nature called. Filming 15 seconds every minute. I was hoping to put together a timelapse of the whole thing. Some clouds, unfortunately, rolled over the sun and caused some blurring/extinction that made the images not good. And in addition, the roof isn't excactly stable, so I sometimes walked too close to the telescope, making the image jump all over. And AutoStakkert made a mess of those images. But as a whole, I think it was an interesting exercise. The sun wasn't exploding with action, but enough to make some interesting watch in adittion to the little dot called Mercury.
I forgot to check for dust on the camera, and it had lots, as can be seen on the video... In addition, my mount was not aligned, causing the sun to move around in the field, And thus, the dust spots also moves around in the video. Oh well. Maybe next time. :-)

Tech data : Lunt 35mm H-Alpha, QHY5II camera, 1 ms exposure. Processing in AutoStakkert 2, centering and timelapse video in PIPP. Coloring in PS.


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