Mercury Transit 09 May 2016 - Playa de las Americas, Tenerife
On Monday 09 May 2016, there was a Mercury Transit. It would be the 5th Mercury Transit to observe. First 1993 in New Zealand, then 1999 in Arizona US, 2003 Gibraltar, 2006 Dallas US, and 2016 ... Tenerife.
Plan A was to observe the transit from Teide Observatory. Booked a night at Teide, including meals etc. Night before the Transit we cancelled as the weather forecast did not look good for Teide. This in contradiction of the weather forecast in Playa de Las Americas, where we stayed for 2 other nights.
Plan B was to observe from the roof of the hotel, where we had the roof pool and the roof bar. What else do we need to observe the transit .... The equipment was tested and we obviously needed extra cable for the computer as for what we had, it was blocking some entrance doors for guests. The morning of the transit, the roof bar entrance was closed ... due to heavy winds ... Even negotiating with the hotel staff did not work out ...
Plan C ... We checked already some rooms in the South direction and with big balconies. Non where available. So we decided to observe from the balcony from our room. Seemed to work. Jo quick shopping for drinks (Corona), snacks and tape. For the heavy wind, we used the bed sheets to cover the balcony rails and we used the blankets for comfortable observing on the floor.
We used the Lunt 35 hydrogen Alpha only as the SW with CaK was too unstable and the wind still caused issues with focusing, vibration and and tracking. There was no time left to fiddle and we just focused on the Lunt 35 with DMK41.
We could see the transit ingress earlier than the predicted time. And that was due to the use of the hydrogen Alpha observation and a prominence, just where Mercury would "enter". All results on this page. It got cloudy after a few hours and it remained for nearly 3 hours. Due to the heavy clouds we missed the egress. We only could see through clouds the disappearance of Mercury.
Plan A was to observe the transit from Teide Observatory. Booked a night at Teide, including meals etc. Night before the Transit we cancelled as the weather forecast did not look good for Teide. This in contradiction of the weather forecast in Playa de Las Americas, where we stayed for 2 other nights.
Plan B was to observe from the roof of the hotel, where we had the roof pool and the roof bar. What else do we need to observe the transit .... The equipment was tested and we obviously needed extra cable for the computer as for what we had, it was blocking some entrance doors for guests. The morning of the transit, the roof bar entrance was closed ... due to heavy winds ... Even negotiating with the hotel staff did not work out ...
Plan C ... We checked already some rooms in the South direction and with big balconies. Non where available. So we decided to observe from the balcony from our room. Seemed to work. Jo quick shopping for drinks (Corona), snacks and tape. For the heavy wind, we used the bed sheets to cover the balcony rails and we used the blankets for comfortable observing on the floor.
We used the Lunt 35 hydrogen Alpha only as the SW with CaK was too unstable and the wind still caused issues with focusing, vibration and and tracking. There was no time left to fiddle and we just focused on the Lunt 35 with DMK41.
We could see the transit ingress earlier than the predicted time. And that was due to the use of the hydrogen Alpha observation and a prominence, just where Mercury would "enter". All results on this page. It got cloudy after a few hours and it remained for nearly 3 hours. Due to the heavy clouds we missed the egress. We only could see through clouds the disappearance of Mercury.