Mercury Transit - Movie!

[stuart]

From the CU Boulder campus in Colorado, I took images of Mercury from 12:13 to 3:40 MST, when the sun set behind the mountains. I used a Canon Digital Rebel 350D camera with a 1000 mm lens and a solar filter, mounted on a clock-driven mount.

I took 5 images every 5 minutes (except from 12:13-12:20, when I did 5 images ever minute) and averaged them using a program I wrote. I sharpened them a bit to bring out the important feature, but I did not over-sharpen in order to avoid the pixelation that happens in so many poorly processed images. I then put them together into a movie that's about 600 MB at full resolution (with the solar disk covering 1410 px). I shrunk it to 325x325 px (solar disk is 288 px, or 4 inches) so that the animaged GIF file is about 1.9 MB. At this resolution, I'm fairly happy with the results, but at higher resolution you can tell that the seeing was pretty bad at times. Oh, and the image files on my hard drive take up about 19 GB.

Anyway, I'm not uploading such a large file on the EA server, so I'm linking to it here: Click Me (1.9 MB). I should note that since Mercury's speed across the solar disk was a little under 0.1 arcsec per sec, it travelled about 3.5-4 times its diameter between shots. But there was NO WAY I was going to take even more images and have to spend even more time processing.

In addition, since I took some shots at the stages of ingress, I compiled them into the shot attached below. It shows the first 7 minutes of the transit. It's probably not even close to the best way to display it, but I'm tired now.

[dpab]

Thats great turned out really good , you know what your doin.
Dave
I added a 3-D photo ..Ive got to get some cheapo glass's

[Blue Fire]

Nice work, Stuart! Great animation! That little pinpoint of Mercury really brings home just how small Mercury (and Earth for that matter) is in comparison to the sun. I just keep thinking that Mercury looks like it ought to be vaporized any second. I'm very glad you shared your work with us.

[Blue Fire]

Originally Posted by dpab

Thats great turned out really good , you know what your doin.
Dave
I added a 3-D photo ..Ive got to get some cheapo glass's

I remember that 3D pic was on APOD some time ago. Here's my post from the APOD thread in the General Astronomy forum:

Re the Apollo 17 VIP Site Anaglyph, I finally got hold of some red/blue glasses from a friend. Gotta say I was a bit disappointed - the 3D effect didn't seem to jump out at me like I expected. However, it was worth a look - the glasses did make the image seem "more real", especially the tires on the rover. I'm guessing that the featureless background of the lunar surface had something to do with my perception - there seemed to be precious little for the eye to compare to, and the contrast between the detail of the vehicle and the backdrop of the moon's surface really didn't work to any advantage like I was expecting.

So if you do get some glasses, let me know what you thought of it. As above, I wasn't too impressed, but maybe different glasses would make a difference.

[Diana]

That was pretty neat Stuart, really nice.......

Originally Posted by dpab

I added a 3-D photo ..Ive got to get some cheapo glass's

I have a couple of those 3-D pics of Mars.....They were included in one of the astronomy magazines I buy frequently. Of course the glasses were also included....


Diana

[stuart]

Thanks for the compliments. I fixed up one of the images in the sequence last night, and I processed the ones during sunset (nice silhouette of trees), so I'll post again soon.

[stuart]

I've posted a revised movie (slightly cleaner with one of the really bad frames re-done) on my website (different link): Movie.

I've also re-done the compilation in a form that I like slightly more (another link): Photo.

[Blue Fire]

Really good stuff Stuart!!! Great work! I gotta say that I like it. I missed the actual thing myself due to weather, but now I don't feel so bad having viewed your capture of the transit.

[Darryl]

Originally Posted by stuart

I've posted a revised movie (slightly cleaner with one of the really bad frames re-done) on my website (different link): Movie.

I've also re-done the compilation in a form that I like slightly more (another link): Photo.

Hi Stuart,

Very nice. Its one of the best images I have seen of the transit and the only movie. Could you upload it to the gallery?

[stuart]

Sure, Darryl. But I need to get up in 5 hrs to catch a bus to catch a plane to go home for a week, so I'll put them in the gallery when I get back (since the images are all archived in a DVD in higher quality and I need to finish packing now).