What's the Best Way to Present This? (Mercury Transit Steps)

astrostu · Nov 10, 2006

Hello all -

I photographed the transit of Mercury across the Sun on Wednesday for as long as I was able (until it set). I took photos every 5 minutes to make a movie, but I also took photos every minute at the beginning. I'm trying to figure out the best way to display the first 7 minutes in a non-movie form that shows Mercury slowly entering the solar disk.

What I put together below was my shoddy and uncreative attempt last night (shrunk to about 30% to fit on the screen). Mercury is the tiny dot at about the 7:00 position (not the larger, more interesting sunspot at the 8:00 position).

Anyone have ideas?

xfloggingkylex · Nov 12, 2006

You have to change the opacity of each picture so that the original is very faint and the final one is 100% there. The others in between will give it that feeling of motion.

astrostu · Nov 12, 2006

xfloggingkylex said:
You have to change the opacity of each picture so that the original is very faint and the final one is 100% there. The others in between will give it that feeling of motion.

I don't think this will accomplish what I want ... I want to show the progress of Mercury through the disk, so having the first few minutes be very low opacity will mean that you'd hardly be able to see it.

xfloggingkylex · Nov 12, 2006

ok I see what you are saying. it would really depend on how far apart they really are when layed on top of each other but I'd probably set it up so there is only one sun, and let mercury be a streak across the bottom maybe? other than that I'm not sure what you could do. The picture you have no just looks like the same picture over and over.

Also what kind of filter do you need to get pictures of the sun like this, that sunspot is great.

astrostu · Nov 12, 2006

If you look closely, the tiny dot of Mercury moves from not present, to just touching the edge, to being slightly inside the edge. Since they were taken 1 minute apart, and Mercury moved about 0.1 arcsec per sec, then it moved about 6 arcsecs between shots, which is slightly less than the diameter of it against the solar disk. So if I just layered them, yeah, it would appear solely as a streak.

The filter was a 72 mm threaded filter on my 1000 mm lens ... I think the brand was Thousand Oaks.

xfloggingkylex · Nov 12, 2006

astrostu said:
If you look closely, the tiny dot of Mercury moves from not present, to just touching the edge, to being slightly inside the edge. Since they were taken 1 minute apart, and Mercury moved about 0.1 arcsec per sec, then it moved about 6 arcsecs between shots, which is slightly less than the diameter of it against the solar disk. So if I just layered them, yeah, it would appear solely as a streak.

The filter was a 72 mm threaded filter on my 1000 mm lens ... I think the brand was Thousand Oaks.

what is the type of filter called?

astrostu · Nov 12, 2006

xfloggingkylex said:
what is the type of filter called?

A solar filter. :wink:

xfloggingkylex · Nov 13, 2006

astrostu said:
A solar filter.

awesome, so with that on you just look at the sun and take pictures with no worries of burning up the sensor of your camera? How long are the exposures?

BTW your site is amazing. What kind of telescope are you using for the shots of the galaxies and nebulas?

astrostu · Nov 13, 2006

xfloggingkylex said:
awesome, so with that on you just look at the sun and take pictures with no worries of burning up the sensor of your camera? How long are the exposures?

The filter I have lets in 1/1000 of 1% of the light (I think ... so that's 0.001% of incomming light). That makes it about 10x fainter than the full moon. Those exposures were 1/250 sec.

xfloggingkylex said:
BTW your site is amazing. What kind of telescope are you using for the shots of the galaxies and nebulas?

Thanks. The specifics for each shot are listed in the table below each image (it should update for each image). The only reason I'm not just telling you is because some were taken with different equipment, so it really depends on which one you're talking about.

xfloggingkylex · Nov 13, 2006

astrostu said:
The filter I have lets in 1/1000 of 1% of the light (I think ... so that's 0.001% of incomming light). That makes it about 10x fainter than the full moon. Those exposures were 1/250 sec.

Thanks. The specifics for each shot are listed in the table below each image (it should update for each image). The only reason I'm not just telling you is because some were taken with different equipment, so it really depends on which one you're talking about.

Wow thats some kind of ND filter huh

I was mainly wondering if you were using consumer grade telescopes or were they fancy things that I wouldn't have access to.

astrostu · Nov 13, 2006

xfloggingkylex said:
I was mainly wondering if you were using consumer grade telescopes or were they fancy things that I wouldn't have access to.

Nope, just the 1000 mm lens.

xfloggingkylex · Nov 13, 2006

astrostu said:
Nope, just the 1000 mm lens.

for the galaxies?

EDIT: particularly M2- Globular Cluster. Is that using a consumer level telescope? It doesn't look like it from the clarity of the shot.