Pictures on this page were taken from the town of Péronne (Somme department - North of France).
Equipment used for observation was composed of a MEADE LX10 8" telescope equipped with an aperture filter using an Astrosolar sheet.
Pictures were captured with a VESTA PRO camera equipped with an IR Cut filter and a CASIO QV4000 digital camera placed in afocal mode behind a SP40mm eyepiece.
Transit begins
At 7H11 local time(UT+2), a black drop crosses the solar limb. Raw picture captured under strong atmospheric turbulence with a VESTA PRO camera.
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Immersion movie (400x300 AVI format with
DIVX compression 142K)
The real duration is 5 minutes.
Mercury passing along
Transit was 5 hours and 20 minutes long. Pictures below (click to enlarge) were captured with a CASIO QV4000 digital camera placed in afocal mode behind a SP 40mm eyepiece. Time is displayed in local time (UT+2).
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07H42 |
08H54 |
09H40 |
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10H41 |
11H41 |
Movie made with the 5 upper pictures GIF
format .GIF 575K)
Notice the spot displacement
involved by sun rotation and the oval shape of the solar disk at
the beginning of the movie when the sun is low above the horizon.
25 minutes before the end
what an extraordinary vision that
this small planet drifting 65 millions kilometers above the
grained surface of the huge sun !
Combination of 8 raw pictures captured with a VESTA PRO camera as
the turbulence was low for a while.
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Transit is ending
At 12H32 local time (UT+2), Mercure is leaving the solar disk. Combination of 4 raw pictures captured with a VESTA PRO camera.
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Last contact movie (400x300 AVI format
with DIVX compression 145K)
Real duration is 8 minutes.
Atmospheric turbulence is still strong.