BackdoorArts
Senior Member
When astronomical or atmospheric events occur around here it's a better than even money bet that my corner of NJ will be clouded over. Somehow yesterday it was not, so I found myself climbing down and back up the flight of steps from my home office to the front yard every 10 minutes. These old knees are aching, but I managed to get it.
Shot with a D500 with 300mm f4 pf + 1.4TCii plus ND400 & ND8 filters. I tried stacking an additional ND4 & ND2 but any additional filters caused reflectivity between them and blurred the image. Exposure varied as the sun rose but ultimately I was at 1/5000 & f/16.
I should note that astrophotography is not my thing, so while I could reason out the explanation from my 5 semesters of college physics I should inform you that the path of Mercury you see here is not what I saw straight out of camera. What I got there was more of an arc from the lower left (about 7 o'clock) to the right edge (about 2:30 on the dial). I suspect with the earth's rotation in order to produce a straight line the camera should have been rotated over time instead of remaining level to the ground. I based the line on the median points in the arch and rotated images around the center to line up since it's what I've seen in all other transit composites.
Shot with a D500 with 300mm f4 pf + 1.4TCii plus ND400 & ND8 filters. I tried stacking an additional ND4 & ND2 but any additional filters caused reflectivity between them and blurred the image. Exposure varied as the sun rose but ultimately I was at 1/5000 & f/16.
I should note that astrophotography is not my thing, so while I could reason out the explanation from my 5 semesters of college physics I should inform you that the path of Mercury you see here is not what I saw straight out of camera. What I got there was more of an arc from the lower left (about 7 o'clock) to the right edge (about 2:30 on the dial). I suspect with the earth's rotation in order to produce a straight line the camera should have been rotated over time instead of remaining level to the ground. I based the line on the median points in the arch and rotated images around the center to line up since it's what I've seen in all other transit composites.
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