Mercury 14 Sept 2021 (LacailleOz)

Contains: Solar system body or event

Mercury 14 Sept 2021

Here in South Canberra we have been doing battle with poor seeing conditions for some weeks, particularly for the gas giants. I decided to take a sabbatical from them for a while and work on Mercury, currently at near maximum elongation, so allowing me to safely work on it just above the roof, while the sun sets behind my house. Of course this is not ideal for imaging, but it is better than nothing!

I found in a previous effort that an IR 850 nm filter gave better results for me than my 685 nm.

Here I ran off three videos of 3 minutes, then synthesised the three stacked and sharpened images. I present the results, with the relevant WJ simulation to show both the strengths and weaknesses of the result. There are congruencies in albedo between the two images, but the diffraction ring hides much potentially confirmatory detail, yet I am unwilling to push the processing too far, lest I introduce artefacts.

All in all, it is my best Mercury image so far and, considering the small size and capture conditions, it does give a nice impression of its true appearance.

Original
B
Final
C

B

Description: Muted the diffraction ring a little and increased the contrast.

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: This is exactly as before except for the addition of a simulation based on a topographic false colour image, to better allow one to distinguish any real structures from artefacts.

Uploaded: ...

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
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Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
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Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
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Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

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Astrometry.net job	n/a
PixInsight job	n/a
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Mercury 14 Sept 2021

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Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

Mercury 14 Sept 2021

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Revisions

B

C

Histogram

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