Seeing the beginning of the Mercury overpass in Tampere was so unlikely that I decided to travel to Madeira to see the event, when it happened to be the nearest possible place where the overpass would be visible from start to finish. After several months of preparation, we were on a plane and after getting to the destination we were excited about Monday's weather. The previous week was partly cloudy and the weather forecasts did not promise better weather. This time, however, the weather forecasts were wrong and the Sun pasted from a cloudless sky. The observation cycle turned out to be we...

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I photographed the passage from the focal plane of a five-inch lens tube with a SLR camera. In less than two hours, I got three hundred squares, however, most of which were wasted due to cloud cover. I compiled the best hits from a thirteen sample stack (main image). The other two images are the first and last hit, 13:04 and 14:54 UTC, respectively.

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On the way to work, I had time to describe the first half hour of the passing. There were occasional thin clouds in the sky, but the shooting conditions were good. Mercury stands out from the picture, but the lens could have had a little more length.

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The passage of Mercury. I stopped filming shortly before 3pm local time as the sun occasionally went into the cloud and the air became more hazy, the first two images are from the beginning of the overflow and the third before the clouds started to bother.

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In Finland, I would not have seen this because of the clouds, but because it is a relatively rare event, I decided to rent a remote solar tube from Tenerife.

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Mercury crossing 09.05.2016 As Mercury’s overrun approaches again, I’ll put here my pictures of the 2016 overrun. The images are flashes from the video mode and shooting mode of the camcorder. My camcorder is a Panasonic HC-V520. The camera in front had a sun filter. In the bright sunshine, it was difficult to detect Mercury in the viewfinder. The size of the planet was about 12 ”(Sky and Telescope) and it was really small in the viewfinder. From the video, I defined times by dictating time stamps during filming. When I dismantled Fim from the time stamps, I got accurate moments of observation...

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The passage of Mercury on November 10, 1973 As the passage of Mercury approaches again, I will put here my pictures of the 1970 passage. I have copied the images from the shots taken with the super 8 film camera (Canon 518) to a computer. The filming speed was 18 frames per second. The camera was attached to the telescope. It was aimed at a cardboard plate on which the sun was projected. The distance to the tube was about 30 to 40 cm. My tube is 20 cm Newton with a focal length of 1920 mm. With projection board, the magnification was approximately 400 to 500 times. Even the slightest wind wave...

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The passage of Mercury on May 9, 1970 As the passage of Mercury approaches again, I will put here my pictures of the 1970 passage. I have copied the images from the shots taken with a super 8 film camera (Canon 518) to a computer. The filming speed was 18 frames per second. The camera was attached to the telescope. It was aimed at a cardboard plate on which the sun was projected. The distance to the tube was about 30 to 40 cm. My tube is 20 cm Newton with a focal length of 1920 mm. With projection board, the magnification was approximately 400 to 500 times. Even the slightest wind waved the tu...

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Again, one of those phenomena and events that no man will see many times. The weather in Finland can ruin even the few that happen to be seen here. This time this did not happen and the only nuisance was scorched ears and even a few shoulders.

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A charming day last spring. This was visible over 7 hours ...

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I guess it was this phenomenon to check it out, when the next one goes to the next one.

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The first time I got to observe the passage of the planet in front of the Sun. Admittedly, I couldn’t delve into the subject for very long, a quick hand shot after work, and a little later, when I had time to better describe, the clouds became messy. Later, however, there was such a moment that I had time to take a few additional pictures. In the animation, I tested whether Mercury’s motion would be visible in just over three minutes. I see it. The larger comma cluster is AR2542, the smaller AR2543. The first time I also calculated the sunspot number from my image. I got to read 36. I didn'...

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The University of Greifswald Observatory (Greifswald Sternwarte) is located in the same yard as my workplace. The old building with its observatory towers had been enticing me to explore the sky for a long time anyway, other than through the camera lens. It was nice to get to tour Mercury’s overpass with a historic Newton-type telescope, from which I put it as pictured. Astronomical activity in Greifswald has been practiced since the 18th century. In the pictures, Mercury stands out from the window on the right and in the middle is a sunspot. The star hobby in Greifswald is available in German...

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A quick observation had to go on to make Mercury pass over when the weather favored it.

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On the day of the crossing, Sirius from Jyväskylä arranged an opportunity to look at the planet in the port of Jyväskylä, and that was where the first moments were and I took a picture with a mirror that could fit in a school backpack. The evening was supposed to go with the newly arrived German exchange student for the final moments of the passage as the sun set behind the trees, but suitably the sun filter was forgotten home and ND did nothing without the help of the clouds.

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The commute suitably transported to Tampere as an overtaking evening. I was a little ill-equipped for the event, so I said I was going to the Ursa observatory in Tampere to pump the pipe. The bag contained only an EF 100-400mm lens and a small pile of miscellaneous filters. I climbed the dome of the Kaupku observatory, where Kari Kuure presented the eclipse to the star show guests with hydrogen-alpha and calcium tubes. I tried to stick Sonya in the tube with poor success: the focus just didn't work out no matter how. I stated that the new technology should ski to six. How so should these t...

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A nice experience is also favored by this sky event and the weather. Along with another timelapse of the sunset, Mercury stands out quite faintly but yes it does. The first picture was taken at 16:38 and the second at 20:58. The second image is cropped from the original to make Mercury stand out.

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The observation is from the balcony of the apartment building, the observation device is a skywacher 200/1000. 28mm eyepiece + 2x barlovi and baaper solar film.

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The combined observation session and audience display was a poor solution and the sufferer was the observations. The presence of the audience was so disturbing that many important things were left undone for the observations and images to be fully successful. After all, something grabbed with the image cells and, after a time-consuming drilling, also something almost presentable to be downloaded here to the Sky Watch. The purple image is taken with the calcium K-line (CaK) wavelength and the red with the hydrogen-alpha solar telescope.

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We had agreed among the Altair observation team to go and observe the passage of Mercury to Vanhankylänniemi beach. The sky was clear and the temperature alarmed the heat readings, so what better for the conditions. I first erected my device on the headland lawn and photographed the beginning of the overpass from there. I also watched the event visually with Terho Erkkilä's lens tube. Unfortunately, the shooting adjustments were not quite right at first. Matti Salo hurried me to go to a nearby beach to take a picture and I carried my device there. Tracking the overpass continued in nice si...

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