Contains:  Solar system body or event
Mercury on 2020-05-25 -- My First Mercury Image, JDJ

Mercury on 2020-05-25 -- My First Mercury Image

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

I made my first observation and image of Mercury on the evening of May 25, 2020. I was setup for daytime imaging to catch Venus at a few percent illumination, and decided to give Mercury a try while I was at it. It was tough to spot in daytime, not near as easy a target as brilliant (and huge) Venus. Seeing was below average and I hard a hard time trying to find focus on Mercury's tiny disk, but if I squint I can almost convince myself there are a few albedo features in my image consistent with the WinJupos ephemerides...

Imaged with a C8 Evo, ZWO ADC, Baader UV-IR Cut filters, and ZWO ASI224MC. Imaging train was configured to give ~F/20. Image capture using Firecapture (see below for exposure settings). Stacking in AutoStakkert3 (best 5% of ~75000 frames captured over 180 seconds). Color balancing and Wavelet sharpening in Registax6. Processed (derotated) single image in WinJUPOS.

Exposure settings for UV-IR Cut Filter images: Shutter=1.0ms, Gain=275, Histogram=~60%, ~470 FPS

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