Observing Log for Mike Durkin
5/9/2016 about 7:00AM-2:00PM
Location: TRNC, Jones Beach, NY
Transparency: 3-9, Seeing: 3/5
Temperature: 45-65
Equipment: 127mm Mak, PST, Canon T3i
Transit of Mercury!
Started out partially cloudy, so was chasing suckerholes for a couple of hours before had long periods of clear sky.
Visually, I was able to make out two sunspot areas. One was small-medium size with some smaller spots around the region.
And there was another 2-3 that was very small near the middle of the solar disk. And there might have also been a sunspot
or some other active region near the limb of the disk.
I was disappointed by the focusing in the DSLR. The image never quite looked as sharp as it did in the eyepiece.
I don't know if that is due to seeing or some other effect. The view in the PST was also nice. The surface of the sub
in H-alpha looked much more interesting that in visual with some filaments and active regions. There were also a couple
of faint prominences, but I needed to look at some one elses PST first to know that they were there.
Finished up around 1:30-2:00. A layer of clouds came in and made it very difficult to observe for the rest of the transit.
There was a decent number of AOS people who were also there. Plus a few stragglers came to ask what was happening.
Some pictures of the transit:
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