Some images from the early morning transit event of Mercury on 7th May 2003. Transit external ingress (first contact) was at 0511 hrs UT from Luton, UK but this was not seen due to i) a low Sun elevation of just 6 degrees and ii) low clouds in the east, as seen in these images:
Key facts on this transit:
Mercury is the little black speck seen close to the upper right hand side of the solar disk in the above true colour projected image, taken at 0610 hrs UT on 7th May 2003 at 54x magnification on my Tal-1.
The image is geometrically slightly distorted due to mis-alignment between the digital camera and the ray path with reference to the perpendicular plane of the projection screen.
At the time of this image, the 3,000 mile diameter planet was suspended 42 million miles "above" the Sun's sphere in its 88 day orbital cycle.
Mercury was close to aphelion in its orbit and its angular diameter as seen from Earth was just over 12 arc seconds.
The Earth-Sun distance at this time was 94 million miles.
Compare these proportions with the Sun's physical diameter of 865,000 miles to get a true, 3D sense of perspective and scale on this cosmic event.
Below is a colour-enhanced photo taken by a friend at a similar time using his Newtonian reflector equipped with a highly specialised Baader film accessory:-
Left: A spacecraft image of Mercury
