Updated: 2004-05-07 20:04 UTC

The 2003 Transit of Mercury.




Live WebCam Images of the Mercury Transit on 2003-05-07.

Worth Hill Observatory, Worth Matravers, Dorset, England.



To prevent server overload the images are now being posted to several mirror sites, follow the link to see a list of these sites. The link will open into a new window. The Mercury Transit Images from Worth Hill Observatory.



In 2004, Worth Hill Observatory is also presenting a live webcast of the Transit of Venus on 2004-06-08. This event can be seen on another web page. Follow the link to see The Venus Transit Images from Worth Hill Observatory. The link will open into a new window.



Introduction to the 2003 May 07 Transit of Mercury.



A rare chance to see a transit of the planet Mercury across the Sun's disc. This happens just about 13 times per century, and this event is quite long, lasting about five and a half hours. The event can be seen across Europe and Africa, as well as most of Asia and the far-East; anywhere that there is daylight. For most of the US it occurs just before their Sun rise on 2003 May 7th. Mercury is quite a small planet, so will appear only as a very small black dot on the face of the Sun. This Mercury transit is the first one for several years.

A transit is simply where a planet passes in front of the Sun's disc as seen by the observer. There is another transit in 2004, but that will involve the planet Venus instead; only the inferior planets, Mercury and Venus, can Transit the Sun.

Warning: You will go blind in a fraction of a second if you look at the Sun through binoculars or a telescope. The only safe way is to project the image of the Solar disc onto a piece of card.

When the Moon passes in front of the Sun it can partially or sometimes completely obscure it, and that is known as an eclipse. Another type of eclipse occurs when the full Moon passes through the Earth's shadow. Sometimes the Moon, or one of the planets, will pass in front of a star, or very rarely in front of a planet, and that event is known as an occultation. In 2003, the May 7th event is a Transit of the planet Mercury across the face of the Sun.



Getting Images of the Mercury Transit on 2003-05-07.



This page will have near realtime live images added to it on 2003 May 07, approximately every 15 minutes from 05:00 to 11:00 UTC. After the event, these images will also be assembled into an animation file, which will then be made available on this site.

Some other sites may be running a webcam showing a live picture or images taken at very small intervals. Here, it was felt that since the planet Mercury is such a small dot, and moves so slowly across the Sun's disk, that it may be more difficult for people to make out what is happening, especially as most webcams have quite low resolution.

These images from Worth Hill Observatory were originally going to be from a CCD camera, rather than a webcam, but this was found to saturate quite easily. An Astro-Vid camera, and frame capture software, is being used instead. Early trials used a small lens in front of the camera to gain a larger image. The camera was heavily protected with several sheets of mylar film, to cut down the light level. These are fixed on the Sun side of the lens. A telescope isn't really necessary for this job, but the observatory will also be using one to take some close up views of the transit from time to time throughout the event. This will be heavily protected with special filters at the "big" end of the scope, NOT at the eyepiece.

We hope that May 7 has clear skies for some serious daytime astronomy!

The date of the event is 2003-05-07, as written in the standard Year-Month-Day format that astronomers have now been using for several centuries. In your old local format you may see the date as either 07/05/2003 (UK) or as 05/07/2003 (US). These correspond to 7th May 2003, or 7 May 2003 for UK readers, and for the US as either May 7th 2003 or as May 7 2003 in longhand formats. These latter ambiguous numerical formats, where the meaning of the 5 and 7 may be accidentally transposed, and hence misunderstood by the reader, should now all be replaced by the unambiguous YYYY-MM-DD formats shown in International Standard ISO 8601 and in the new Internet Standard RFC 3339.



Transit Information for 2003 May 7th.



The transit of Mercury is already mentioned by many other web sites. Some provide maps and diagrams of the event, even photographs of previous such events. A few of these are listed below. A Google search will find many more, perhaps that is how you arrived here? On the day there should be no shortage of information about the event from many sources worldwide.

Worth Hill Observatory will be placing live images on this site as they happen. Additional information will be linked from this page, and there may even be some other image galleries of equipment and people to see here. A chat server may also be running during the transit, with Astronomers live and online to answer any questions that you may have.

Warning: You will go blind in a fraction of a second if you look at the Sun through binoculars or a telescope. The only safe way is to project the image onto a piece of card.



Imaging Equipment Used at Worth Hill Observatory.



AstroVid Camera 50cm Newtonian
Astrovid camera and BAADER AstroSolar filter stopped down to 10cm.
A 50 cm f/4 Newtonian will capture the images.


NEWS: 2003-04-22



Mercury 2003-04-22 20:02 UTC

A quick shot of Mercury in the evening twilight, taken just two weeks before the transit. Low in the Western sky just after Sunset, in a hazy sky, it was fairly easy to find when the sky was dark enough. Using a 3 inch finder scope, with 2 x Barlow, this image is a frame capture from an Astro-Vid camera onto an old networked Dell 486 running Windows 3.11 and "Motion Picture" frame capture software. Mercury was showing a fairly thin crescent when viewed visually, but due to being so close to the horizon the image was quite unstable, hence it is blurred in the video image above. Mercury set below the western horizon not very long after this image was taken, and sets sooner after the Sun on each successive night, making each one more difficult.



NEWS: 2003-05-01



Initially we were going to use Mylar film as a filter, but some new Baader AstroSolar filter film arrived today, and it seemed a good opportunity to try it out. The first image is of a large Sunspot that is visible at the moment. The filter is fitted at the front end of the 50 cm (20 inch) telescope which is also stopped down to an overall aperture of 10 cm (4 inches). Hardware and software as before. We also tried an image using the CCD camera, but the image is still too bright to be useful even though the filter cuts down the light by 99.999%.

Giant Sunspot Group 349
Using the above equipment this image of  the Giant Sunspot group 349 was captured on 2003 May 1st  16:30h UT. This huge group is about ten times the diameter of Earth. Alternatively this spot is  26 times the diameter of Mercury, which will appear a little larger than the spot at lower right!


NEWS: 2003-05-04



Due to a coding error, the page counter wasn't functioning from 2003-05-03 00:22 UTC until 2003-05-04 22:00 UTC if anyone wondered why the visitor numbers seemed very low for those two days.



NEWS: 2003-05-06



Wow! We had 1119 visitors to the website today. Most visitors arrived via the NASA GSFC page. The equipment is all set up and waiting to go. The sky is clear at the moment.



NEWS: 2003-05-07



Sunrise 2003-05-07 and clear skies!

A view across the fields to the dome at Worth Hill Observatory, just before sunrise, 2003-05-07, with clear skies, and a little light cloud in the background.

The dome at sunrise 2003 May 7th; showing the 50cm (20 inch) f/4 Newtonian ready for imaging the transit of Mercury.

The dome and telescope ready to go.

Uploading the Images from the Office!

Processing the images in the office. One computer is used to capture images from the video camera out on the telescope, another to process them, and the third to upload them to the web site.

This site seems to have been a success today, with nearly 16 000 visitors logged by 18:00 UTC. At one point there were several visitors logging in each second.



Composite of the best transit images at Worth Hill Observatory!

A composite of the best images of this transit, from Worth Hill Observatory. The event was interrupted by clouds several times, which has made producing the planned animation very difficult.



Linking to this site.



Why not link to this page? Add a line of code somewhere on your site, perhaps something like:

<a href="http://home.freeuk.net/dgstrange/transit.mercury.2003/" title="Mercury Transit, 2003 May 7th at Worth Hill Observatory">Live Images of the Transit of Mercury 2003</a>



Other Pages with Mercury Transit Information:



These links all open in a new window each time.

NASA: 2003 Mercury Transit information page.

NASA Diagrams for 2003 May 07 Transit.

Transit Information Page from Germany.

ESO Transit Information Page.

University of Essen : Transit Observation Project.

Live Solar Views from SOHO and LASCO satellites.



Other Useful Sites:



Worth Hill Observatory Main Web Site.

Learn more about Wessex Astronomical Society.

What are those 2003-05-07 format dates all about?



Live Images of the Transit of Mercury on 2003 May 7th:



To prevent server overload the images are now being posted to several mirror sites, follow the link to see a list of these sites. The link will open into a new window. The Mercury Transit Images from Worth Hill Observatory.

 

In 2004, Worth Hill Observatory is also presenting a live webcast of the Transit of Venus on 2004-06-08. This event can be seen on another web page. Follow the link to see The Venus Transit Images from Worth Hill Observatory. The link will open into a new window.







Location:

Worth Hill Observatory, Dorset, U.K.

Latitude: 50deg 36min N     Longitude: 002deg 02min W     Elevation: 130 metres     David Strange.

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