Transit of Mercury, 9th May 2016

Transit of Mercury across the Sun, 2016 May 09. This is a composite of images taken between 11:12UT (ingress, left) and 16:07UT (rightmost image of Mercury) after which the sun sank below the roof of my house.

The Sun’s disk is shown in H-α light, revealing detail in the chromosphere which adds another dimension to the view. Note that the chromosphere image is taken from just one of the Mercury frames, otherwise blurring would occur due to the Sun’s rotation and changes in its surface features.

Imaged from my home observatory in Cheshire, UK using a Meade ED5000 80mm refractor, Lunt 60mm H-α filter and a Flea3 U3-13S2M camera.