Crumby's Telescope Tomfoolery Notes - The Mercury Transit

OK. According to today’s electric missal rendition of the November issue of the Orion Sky Times, the Mercury transit shall be visible from the general vicinity of the CB at sundown on November 8 of the Julian, weather permitting. A Mercury transit occurs when Mercury passes between our tiny globe, Earth, and the sun, thus providing the amateur astronomer an opportunity to view this solar system phenomena, a Mercury transit. Thirteen times during an average century, Mercury passes between our little globe and the sun. If Mercury was much bigger, its passage would be referenced as an eclipse rather than as a mere transit.

Considering the situation tactically from the perspective of an amateur astronomer, rather than strategically, like a god, I need to accomplish a great many tactical maneuvers to assure that I shall get to espy the transit. First, I need to find a spot near the CB that allows an unrestricted view of the west horizon that includes Ogma’s path or ecliptic, whichever, where that path transgresses against the horizon. My location needs to be safe to the extent that I shall not be forced to shoot a pesterer that pesters me while I am fixing up the telescopery gear. Then I need to practice looking at the sun with the gear beforehand. Plus, all these preparations shall be to no avail if its cloudy that day at sunset.

With the weather robot in these parts under incompetent Republican control and needing a good calibrating from a real scientist, I shall have to rely on my ovational skills to predict whether the clouds shall make all my preparation unnecessary. Probably I should do that first, to save myself a bunch of aggravation.

Just in case it’s cloudy on November 8 of the Julian, I have already ovated an artist’s rendition of Mercury’s transit as viewed through the telescope of a typical amateur astronomer. Here that is somewhere. The careful observer should note that unlike most artistic renditions of Mercury, mine takes the trouble to include the caudal feathers or tail feathers, whichever, necessary to proper sustained flight.

Also, according to the November electric Orion Sky Times, Venus will do a transit on June 6, 2012. I may need to migrate somewhere else by then, so I can espy that.

Later

OK. I got to excited to do a weather ovation first. Instead, I decided to see if I could get the telescopery gear set up to look at the sun. I needed to do that anyway because the first time, a while back, I tried to look at the sun with the telescopery gear, I didn't look at the sun at all. I got to aggravated trying to find old Ogma and focus in on him. Plus, there's the possibility of blinding yourself without reaching Onan's Limit first and that's no fun. I knew that as aggravated as I was, I was liable to blind myself.

OK. The equipment I used to espy Ogma this time was way better than the first time because I mounted the C 90 Mak on a real telescope tripod instead of a camera tripod. That helped a lot. Also, because of all the trouble I had finding the sun last time, I decided to go with the widest FOV ep I have, a 32 mm plossl with a focal reducer screwed into it. It still took me at least an hour to find the sun in the telescope.

The trouble is, there's no good way to line up the telescope on the sun and I didn't know what the sun was supposed to look like with a modified Baader Astrozap sun filter stuck to the front of the C 90. And worst of all, I can never remember which way the focus knob goes to focus on stars and such versus leaves. I think I'll remember that from now on though with respect to the focuser on the C 90 because at one point I turned the focuser clockwise to look at some leaves, just to make sure the dang thing was working. I had to take the Baader Astrozap off to do that.

Finally, I figured out that I could go by the shadow thrown by the top Baader Astrozap screw to line up on the sun in the horizontal and use the shadows thrown by the top far end of the telescope to line up in the vertical. That actually worked, eventually.

Once I finally found what I thought might be the sun, a big white ball, I still had to focus on it. How the heck do I focus on this thing? I thought. So I fiddled with the focuser until the edge of the white ball looked sharp. Whoa! I could see heat waves or something coming off the edges. Then, looking around on the ball I saw spots. Whoa! So I moved the scope up and down, back and forth to see if the spots stayed on the ball. They did. Whoa! Those are sun spots. I thought. Not merely boogers stuck to one of the lenses.

OK. I better take a picture of the telescopery gear as a pnemonic aid for November 8 of the Julian. There.

All righty then. I'm all set for the transit, equipment wise.

Oh! I also took some pictures of the sunspots, but they were out of focus because I got so excited I forgot to use the remote.