I woke up at 6am this morning to witness a rare phenomenon that won't happen again for another 26 years - The transit of planet Mercury across the face of the Sun.
The weather forecasters were predicting rain and cloudy skies for the morning, but the Lord couldn't have blessed all of us sun-gazers with a better day! ^_^
A word of warning to all budding sun-gazers... Do not look at the sun directly through a telescope without first installing a solar filter, unless you want to end up burning a hole through your eye, or your camera. A telescope like mine has 130 times the light gathering power of the naked eye. Simply put, by the time you feel the pain, it's too late...
The filter is basically a mirrored surface with a safety film that blocks out 99.999% of visible light from the Sun and all the harmful UV rays. It's not that expensive and hey... It doubles up as a mirror too!
Mercury is about 1/285th the size of the Sun - a dot compared to the Sun, kind of like Singapore on the map of the world. However it didn't take long before I found it. See the dot at the top of the Sun? The bottom one's a sun-spot...
Yes... I was referring to that small miniscule dot.
A dot that I had to stare at for 10mins to make sure it wasn't a sun-spot ^_^
Mercury moving slowly towards the edge of the Sun...
Shot taken at maximum zoom of 12mm focal length, 1/500 shutter speed and an f-stop of 2.2... Just because I can ^_^
And what happens when you get your hands on a really really good telescope, like the 1 metre wide Swedish Solar Telescope (SST), compared to my 80mm Celestron?
You get pictures like these...
6 comments:
andy!!!!!!! aaaaaaahhhhh!~ u are there at churchtogether2006! oh no, I should have BE there. so totally missed out. heard from shawn, lindy that it was so fantastic. a whole bunchie from OCF and from subi church people were there too! its such an amazing grace. stupid exams la. hmm..next year then!
WOW
cool pics you got there..
hwo come ur camera is so clear?
With the right equipment, you can take pictures like that with your camera too...
Took me half an hour to finally get the right angle and exposure.
I wish I could say the last 3 photos were taken by me, but nup... =p
They were taken with a telescope about 150 times the size of mine. *gasp!*
Those pics are really really cool!!! beats those old days back in astro club dont you think, haha...
~qiao~
Yes it does... ^_^
Those days of old when we all would gather on rooftops to hunt for satellites and shooting stars...
Memories, memories =)
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