Here are photos I took thru my telescope from the transit of Mercury on November 8th, 2006 (note that I do have a solar filter that allows for such observations of the sun. NEVER look at the sun thru a telescope without such protection!). For those not familiar with what a transit is, simply put it's when a celestial body cuts across the sky in front of the sun. By definition, from the Earth, few objects can make such passes, as they have to lie between the Earth and the sun, thus only Mercury, Venus, the Moon (a.k.a. a solar eclipse), and any other satellite orbiting overhead can produce a transit. The Mercurian Transit is special due to it's relative rarity; the event occurs only 10-20 times a century, with the 21st being on the lighter end of that, however, this is frequent when compared to Venusian transits The next transit, in case you missed it this year, will be on May 9, 2016.

	15mm eyepiece- The transit began at 1:15pm CST, although I didn't quiet get out there right away, and then it took me a little while to set up my telescope and find the sun (since you can't exactly just look thru the finder, unless you want to go blind!). Here not only is Mercury visible, but so is Sunspot 923. 923 being the big black blotch, while Mercury is the tiny dot higher "up" (the images are reversed, so "North" in the pictures are down).
	15mm eyepiece - Perhaps I tried zooming in on this one with the camera, thus accounting for the smaller field of view, but I'm not entirely sure, since that doesn't ever work for me! Who knows? All I can tell is it's another 15mm.
	9mm eyepiece - Here I switched to my 9mm eyepiece (the smaller the size, the more powerful the lens). And of course, since I don't have an SLR camera, it ain't easy getting good pictures via the camera-to-eyepiece method of astrophotography. Thus why many of these aren't centered on anything, but they actually turned out, which is more than I can say for the majority of the photos I took!
	15mm eyepiece - Back to my 15mm, but this time, adding my yellow filter! And apparently zoomed in as well or something, because I know for fact that the first image isn't my 32mm!
	9mm eyepiece - And back to my 9mm with the yellow filter.
	9mm eyepiece
	9mm eyepiece
	6mm eyepiece - Here I switched to my 6mm lens. The only thing is, my telescope isn't the most stable thing out there (especially after I lost a wingnut that attaches the tray to the tripod, and thus steadies it), so that combined with the motion of the Earth and Mercury make things move a little fast at the more powerful magnifications, thus not as good of pictures. :(
	6mm eyepiece
	4mm eyepiece - Switching to my most powerful lens, my 4mm, I was amazed this one actually "turned out." This would be the first time I've used my 4mm, tried to take a picture with it, and actually got something! :D
	15mm eyepiece - Back to my 15mm, sans the yellow filter too. This is also the time when the trees were threatening to obstruct my view, but fortunately, I was able to continue observing/taking pictures! :D
	15mm eyepiece
	32mm eyepiece - Here I switched to "Big Dog," my 32mm lens (unlike my other eyepieces, the lens itself is wider than the eyepiece socket on my telescope, thus the eyepiece is significantly larger than the others). Not only is it my least powerful lens, but it's also the only one I have that is able to view the entire sun within its field of view.
	15mm eyepiece - Again, back to my 15mm, and here the tree branches were really starting to creep in there! But it was getting later (I wish I had times with these, but I want to say it was around 2:45-3:00 when this started), thus the sun was getting low to the horizon.
	15mm eyepiece
	15mm eyepiece
	15mm eyepiece
	15mm eyepiece
	15mm eyepiece - Decided I'd screw the yellow filter back on for a little while.
	15mm eyepiece - This is when it started to get a bit tougher to see Mercury thru the tree branches. :(
	15mm eyepiece - Back to filterless observing! And regardless, it was getting really tough to see Mercury by this point!
	15mm eyepiece - This is what I mean by it was tough! Mercury is in there! And to make things more of a challenge, the camera for some oddball reason wanted to focus in on the trees rather than the "bigger" object in the field of view hehe. To say taking pictures was becoming a struggle by this point would be an understatement.
	15mm eyepiece - By 3:40, I was ready to call it an afternoon! The sun was getting deeper into the trees, I was getting tired from standing for 2½ hours, and well, I really didn't want to have to pack all my stuff up and take it up to the school to keep observing for another hour before the sun would dip below the trees entirely. So this would be when I packed it up. It would have been nice if I would have had a better view (i.e. no trees) and been able to actually see the whole event, rather than just the first half (this was also the halfway point of the transit). Can't complain too much though... at least the weather was NICE! We're talking 70s!!! :D