Derby and District Astronomical Society
Mercury in 2008
This picture by Chris Newsome and Adrian Brown shows Mercury gleaming just above the tree tops at lower left and a thin crescent Moon showing noticeable Earthshine on its unlit portion. It was taken on the 6th May 2008. Chris comments that the Moon was 1.3 days old and very difficult to spot until the sky darkened - and by then it was very low down. This was the first time Adrian had seen Mercury and the first time Chris had seen it through a telescope - up until the night this picture was taken Chris had only seen it twice with the naked eye - and it was clearly a half phase as it was nearing maximum elongation. The image is comprised of 6 frames of 5 seconds each at 100ASA using a 200mm lens on a Canon EOS300D camera. The images were combined in MaximDL and processed in CS2. |
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