Observation by Dawson: Mercury's sodium tail

Uploaded by

Dawson

Observer

Dawson

Observed

2024 Dec 23 - 07:00

Uploaded

2024 Dec 27 - 06:51

Objects

Mercury

Equipment

Askar 120mm refractor
Askar 0.8x reducer
Canon 6Dii
Knight Optical 589.6nm (3nm BW) filter

Exposure

ISO 12,800; 30second

Location

Nottingham

Target name

Mercury's sodium tail

Title

Mercury's sodium tail

About this image

Inspired by Chris Hooker's work on Mercury's sodium tail, and helped immensley by Chris, this is the result of a stack of two of the grossly over-exposed 30 second images, which have been stacked in DSS using the comet setting, and the subsequent image manipulated to tease out evidence of the tail (made monochrome, inverted, and stretched with curves and levels). The artefact at the 8 o’clock position to Mercury is a reflection of Mercury through the optics (including the filter). The faint tail can be seen to go off at about the 1 o’clock position. Mercury was 4 degree 28 arcminutes above the horizon when imaged and the Sun 10 degrees 32 arcminutes below the horizon. This was my first attempt at imaging the sodium tail (well the second as the first was clouded out), and it has taught me a great deal which I need to work on before the next opportunity to capture it. Thanks to Chris Hooker for all his help and advice.

Files associated with this observation

Mercury sodium tail labelled.png (2.3 MB)

Like this image

Peter Mulligan, James Weightman, Eric Watkins, Jeremy Shears, Steve Knight, Callum Potter, Manolo_Rodriguez, Mark Fairfax, Nick Hewitt, Graham Winstanley, Oliver Hext

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