Contains:  Solar system body or event
Mercury 2/3rd illuminated, Niall MacNeill

Mercury 2/3rd illuminated

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

Mercury is now an evening object and at a considerably higher elevation than Venus. I made this capture last evening about 15 minutes before sunset, which can be a time of relatively good seeing. I used the 850nm BP filter to have the best chance of overcoming the atmospheric turbulence. I only stacked 5% of the 21,200 frames captured over 400secs (6.7mins). After sharpening it was a clear that quit e good level of detail has come through and there seems to be quite a good correlation with the WinJUPOS Ephemerides, in terms of bright craters.

I cannot be sure that all the detail seen is real, as it is difficult to validate that they are so by seeing them rotate with the planet.

Comments

Histogram

Mercury 2/3rd illuminated, Niall MacNeill