May 2016 Transit of Mercury

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"A transit of Mercury across the Sun takes place when the planet Mercury passes directly between the Sun and a superior planet, becoming visible against (and hence obscuring a small portion of) the solar disk. During a transit, Mercury appears as a tiny black dot moving across the disk of the Sun.

Transits of Mercury with respect to Earth are much more frequent than transits of Venus, with about 13 or 14 per century, in part because Mercury is closer to the Sun and orbits it more rapidly.

Transits of Mercury occur in May or November. The last four transits occurred on November 15, 1999; May 7, 2003; November 8, 2006; and May 9, 2016. The next will occur on November 11, 2019, and then on November 13, 2032. A typical transit lasts several hours."

This is a composite of ten images taken May 9, 2016 using a Lunt 80mm H-alpha telescope and Canon t2i DSLR camera near Bordentown, NJ 08505.  The forecast near my home in Maryland was for cloudy weather approaching from the south so I drove north the evening before the transit.  The first image was taken 7:19AM EDT and the last at 10:40AM EDT as the clouds finally caught me.