NOTE: THE SIZE OF MERCURY IN THESE IMAGES IS VERY TINY, SO TO BEST SEE IT YOU WILL HAVE TO SELECT THE "ORIGINAL" SIZE SELECTION FOUND UNDER THE IMAGE (IN THE "OTHER SIZES" CATAGORY SHOWN IN BLUE). ONCE IT IS SELECTED IT WILL STAY CHANGED UNTIL YOU CHANGE IT BACK TO RETURN TO THE "LARGE" SIZE THAT IS USUALLY BEST FOR VIEWING MOST OF THE IMAGES ON THIS SITE. IF YOU SELECT "AUTO" IT WILL BE GOOD TO STEP THROUGH THE MOTION OF MERCURY FOR THE EGRESS IMAGES.

This was my 4th Transit of Mercury that I have been able to see. We were originally planning on observing from central Florida but the weather did not look promising, and it would have been a 20 hour drive. The drive would not have been a deterrent, but most cities on the east and southeast region were predicting partly cloudy for T-day, So why go that far when that forecast was available in my region as well.

Snow was predicted for my location but partly cloudy skies were indicated for Owatonna, Minnesota (just north of Hope), 65 miles south of Minneapolis. We left about 2:15 in the morning and drove through snow showers for the first hour or so of the trip for the most part driving between 45 and 55mph due to the slick interstate.

It was 16 degrees F and with the gusting wind it made it feel like about 0F. It was still dark when we arrived and the clouds were still hanging on, but the forecast was to have it breaking off about an hour after sunrise. I started setting up my equipment when is started getting light out and seeing some breaks in the clouds to the northwest. Had some issues getting the camera going after I finally got it pointed sunward after it started breaking through the cloud layer. I should have set it up ahead of time and then realized that my Promote remote control device needed the camera set to take single frame images, not multiple frames. The first pic came at 8:39 UT, about 2 hours after the transit would have started, and 1 1/2 hours after sunrise. I set the remote to take 3 images every minute.

Part way into the transit my mount started going crazy, I summarized that the battery charge had died and it had restarted itself. So we got out the wire and plugged it into the car (which by the way was running the entire time to keep us warm). Then as the transit approached the end, as I was preparing for 3rd and 4th contact to take continuous images, the battery died. I had lots of batteries, but there just was not time to change it out unless I had to! Fortunately I had learned a trick in testing out another camera years ago, if you turn off the camera and turn it back on you can get a burst of power, which each time I did this it allowed me to take one of two additional images multiple times, which is what I did.

The full frame horizontal dimension would allow for 6 images of the Sun side by side, so what is displayed in these images is a fraction of the entire frame. Just think how small Mercury is on a frame!