On November 15 1999 mercury passed in front of the sun. The innermost
planet just barely appeared inside the disc of the sun. The event was visible
around the Pacific and a grazing occultation occurred in the southern hemisphere.
Weather was nice on the day of the event and the full duration of the transit
was observed with an 80mm f8 refractor equipped with 2inch 2x barlow lens.
Pictures were taken on Kodak Gold 200 film. The film negatives were scanned
and processed on a pc-computer.
The picture below was taken at 21:38UT (1:38pm PST)
Mercury appears as a small black dot at the top of the suns disc. Several large groups of sun spots are visible. The largest one was visible to the unaided eye through a filter.
From a series of images at regular intervals the following composite was put together.
