Start of the transit of Mercury 9th May 2016

This is derived from a video taken with a ZWO ASI120MM mono camera, through an Altair Astro Starwave 102mm ED refractor.
Because of problems with cloud, the video could not be processed in a standard way with either Registax or Autostakkert. Instead, individual frames were extracted from the video and this time-lapse composite created. It was colourised in Photoshop CS6 and rotated through 90 deg for better display here.

Mercury is the dense spot near the bottom of each frame, while a large sunspot group can be seen towards the top.
Note the evidence of cloud across the face of the sun in each frame. These were the best to be extracted from many thousands of video frames, indicating just how difficult the weather conditions were.

Date: 09/05/2016

Start of the transit of Mercury 9th May 2016

This is derived from a video taken with a ZWO ASI120MM mono camera, through an Altair Astro Starwave 102mm ED refractor.
Because of problems with cloud, the video could not be processed in a standard way with either Registax or Autostakkert. Instead, individual frames were extracted from the video and this time-lapse composite created. It was colourised in Photoshop CS6 and rotated through 90 deg for better display here.

Mercury is the dense spot near the bottom of each frame, while a large sunspot group can be seen towards the top.
Note the evidence of cloud across the face of the sun in each frame. These were the best to be extracted from many thousands of video frames, indicating just how difficult the weather conditions were.

Date: 09/05/2016