Re: (SNES) Mercury in daylight!

["Les Coleman" <les11@cox.net>]

> Totally unlike the past 6 weekends, this has been a
> relatively nice Saturday.  I decided to view and tape
> the sunspot group I've heard about.  I'll hopefully
> run the tape through Registax tonight and see how it
> came out.  The recent thread got me thinking of
> Mercury - close to the sun (~6 degrees) but not much
> more so than times I've spotted Venus, and at better
> than mag. -1, too tempting to pass on.  Setting
> circles did the trick, on the first try it was almost
> centered in my 25mm eyepiece (on C8).  Lost and
> recaptured it two more times.  1) fat head bumped the
> scope, 2) so THAT'S what the declination clamp is for.
>  I was even able to swap the 25mm for the almost
> parfocal 15mm, making it an even larger featureless
> white disk.  I tried to tape it also, but don't expect
> much.  Needless to say it has made my day.  And now,
> as much as I envy your clear skies (especially summer)
> it's time to get back to the only thing that makes
> living here tolerable...I'm getting the boat ready,
> it's almost 80 today.

Ed,

Congratulations!  Until fairly recently, most of our best Earth based pictures of Mercury
have been taken near midday. The air near the horizon makes for poor imaging near sunrise
or sunset, and it is always close to one or the other when looking at Mercury at night, or
more accurately late twilight.

I've heard that the Hubble cannot image Mercury because the safety software won't allow the
OTA to come within a certain angular distance from the Sun. Mercury always is too close.
While we have views of much of Mercury's surface, there still are large parts which are
"terra incognito" or perhaps more appropriately "mercurius incognito".

Les
=====
Post to the entire list by writing to snegazers@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe snegazers"