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Mercury 19 September 2019
About this observation
Observer
Philip Masding
Time of observation
19/09/2019 - 14:00
Object
Mercury
Observing location
Manchester
Equipment
10" LX200 classic
Skyris 618M mono camera
Baader 685nm IR pass filter
Skyris 618M mono camera
Baader 685nm IR pass filter
Exposure
1/377 seconds
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My first attempt at daylight imaging of Mercury. I first centred the scope on the Sun (with a Mylar filter) then used GOTO Mercury. I positioned the observatory roof so the scope was completely in shade, removed the solar filter and Mercury was in the f10 field. I then switched to f20 and started imaging. The IR pass filter certainly seems to help with visibility and seeing. Processing shows that a small number (<1%) of individual frames are very good clearly showing the phase but no real detail due to noise. Finally it has to be said observing on a warm sunny afternoon is great!
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Comments
Very good first attempt
Hi Philip,
Very good first attempt with excellent correspondence between the blurred Messenger data and your own image. Your planet rotations are a bit mismatched though esp. the blurred Mssenger one versus non blurred.
Did you hand pick the best frames?
Martin
Mercury imaging
Hi Martin,
Thanks! I realise my Messenger images aren't quite right. I created the blurred image from Stellarium and didn't keep the original. So the sharp image is a second independent grab and I didn't make sure they were the same. Also the exact orientation won't be the same as my image because I didn't align north up very carefully.
I used AutoStakkert to roughly sort the frames on quality. Then I used a method from a professional paper I found recently to create the final image with no manual selection by me. It's a development of lucky imaging using Fourier transforms. It seems promising.
Cheers
Phil
Fourier transforms
Hi Phil,
That professional paper sounds interesting - do you have any more details? It would be great if that algorithm could be incorporated directly in Autostakkert or PIPP and I might be able to push that. You can contact me via my website front page at www.skyinspector.co.uk
Cheers
Martin