Mercury Transit
You can follow the Mercury transit until 0100 GMT (UT) via the Big Bear Solar Observatory‘s webcam. Here’s the start. You’re looking for the black dot that shifts.
Below is a version I’ve re-coloured, but hopefully you can see where the dot has moved.

The reason the live image appears black and white is that the Big Bear Observatory is only looking at light in the H-Alpha wavelength, which means that it’s all one shade. This limitation that allows them to pick out features on the Sun better. If I wanted to re-colour an image properly I’d really need two or three wavelengths to bring out features.
| Print article | This entry was posted by Alun on 8th of November, 2006 at 7:23 pm, and is filed under Science. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |
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