Here is one of my sharpest full Solar Disk Close-up shots of the 2019 Mercury Transit that I captured with my Lunt 60mm/50F Hydrogen Alpha Solar telescope & QHY5III290M Camera with 0.5x reducer, It barely fit the Full disk of the sun in the FOV.
Tracking the Sun was done with my Celestron portable Advanced VX mount, Images captured via Fire-Capture software running the QHY Cameras in full res mode. Stacked in Registax6.
After my Show in the Philly Expo center this past weekend,
We drove down to the Wading Pines Campground(39.68778 N, 74.54192 W) in South Eastern New Jersey,
as it was supposed to be the clearest area for most of the Eastern half of the USA.
My friend Raymond Drove all the way down from Ottawa, Canada & setup up the campsite the night before,
and another buddy Greg then drove out from Dayton, Ohio and then he and I drove down to the campsite after we tore down my Art exhibit in Philly.
We got there at 4:00am just in time to polar align our scopes and setup laptops & camera & software started then just waited for sun to clear the horizon. this shot was taken 11-11-2019 at 14:59 U.T., you can see some really nice Prominence activity around the solar limbs, as well as how tiny Mercury is.
it wasn’t bad weather there, temps were 44F in the morning rising to 68F by the end of the transit, the sky was 90% clear…seeing was a bit rough when the sun was low, but that was to be expected..but thin high cirrus clouds started floating through about mid transit…these transits are so nice, if you have clear skies (5.5 hours for this one) since we have lots of time we try different techniques and different scopes/camera combos…
Unfortunately most solar eclipses are less than 7 minutes before its over..so no time to screw around.
I also captured some white light shots with my 90mm Maksuktov scope. More images coming later..
a little bit of background of myself running on empty…
I ‘m Still trying to recover from the long weekend that started last Thursday at 3am, a 10 hours drive pulling my trailer, setup my booth for 10 hours at the Philly expo center, sell my work all day for 3 days, break down my Booth Sunday night & pack for 4 hours, with Greg’s help, then 3 hour of sleep, then drive 2 hours to NJ to shoot the transit and driving 10 hours home only to run into a Snow squall for 2 hours, finally went to bed by midnight, only to get up again at 5am to go to work this morning. Finally processed one image after dinner and telling my wife about the nasty drive home in the snow squalls.
Crazy busy weekend!!! Sometimes it takes all your time and energy & then some! But it was so worth my 3rd Mercury transit shot!
