September 26, 2003, 14:06 UT (08:06 MDT) in bright dawn,
30 degrees altitude and about one hour after sunrise. The best 93 frames of
3,600 (6 minutes of AVI @ 10 fps).
August 30, 09:19 UT (15:19 MDT). Mercury was about 20
percent illuminated, magnitude 1.4, 9.75 arcseconds in diameter and at an
altitude of 54 degrees. Eleven frames from a 1 minute AVI (600 frames) were
manually selected and then alighed and stacked in Registax 2.0 to produce this
image. 203 mm f/7 newtonian @ f/27 (Televue 2x barlow and extension tube) and
Philips ToUcam Pro PCPV740K webcam.
December 19, 2002, 19:54 UT. My first image of Mercury
obtained with 8" f/7 and Philips ToUcam webcam @ about f/25. This image was
obtained at 12:54 p.m. local time. Mercury had a diameter of 5.88 arcseconds and
was 78 percent illuminated. The color has been balanced so that the sky is
black. Mercury was at an altitude of only 30 degrees when this image was
obtained in very turbulent conditions. It is the result of combining 95 frames
from a 1 minute AVI file of 600 frames.
