Mercury Transit

 
We were treated to a transit of planet Mercury across the Sun today. A number of telescopes were set up in front of the Flandrau Planetarium on the UofA campus and I took some pictures using eyepiece projection of the event. This image was taken with a white light filter on a refractor with my lens at 53mm focal length with an exposure of 1/60 seconds at f/8, ISO 400. Mercury is visible on the right side of the sun near the limb as it approaches its egress late in the transit. The other dark spots are sunspots or dust in the optical path. Check out this photo album to see more of my images from the Mercury Transit: http://picasaweb.google.com/jimscotti/Mercurytransit