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<\/a>An alarm set for o-dark-thirty and a drive to Waimea with the first glow of dawn behind the mauna. I did not have to pack a ‘scope as I would be using an observatory outreach telescope, just make sure I have camera gear ready.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Realistically I was expecting only a few folks in addition to the club members I knew were coming. A light crowd maybe? Thus I was rather surprised to find the parking lot filling quickly and our big conference room buzzing at 6am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was quite the crowd considering the Sun had not yet appeared over the shoulder of the mauna!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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<\/a>Over a hundred local folks had come to enjoy an astronomical spectacle with us, the sky was clear, and we had the equipment to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just as the Sun could be seen through the trees everyone was startled by a hard and sharp tremor. A magnitude 4.9 occurred under the eastern flank of Mauna Kea, not very far away, shaking the building a bit. Everyone evacuated the conference room to the parking lot, right where we were finishing setting up the telescopes. Not a problem, the event went on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There were half a dozen telescopes available to view through, plenty of eyepieces available for the crowd. A big thank you to the members of the West Hawaii Astronomy Club for the assist,the two observatory telescopes would have been hard pressed to give everyone a view. My thanks to Scott, Andrew, Maureen, Tony, and Berndt for bringing equipment to share!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I never had a chance to look through the other telescopes being busy taking photos with dozens of cell phones. I watched the last few moments through the eyepiece as Mercury slipped back into the darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There will not be another transit until 2032, well over a decade away. We can say we did this transit justice, enjoying the view and sharing the wonder with everyone who came.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was a clear predawn sky that greeted Waimea this morning, perfect to watch the transit of Mercury across the Sun. An alarm set for o-dark-thirty and a drive to Waimea with the first glow of dawn behind the mauna. I did not have to pack a ‘scope as I would be using an observatory … Continue reading “Mercury Transit 2019”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,41],"tags":[50,477,92,81,307,75,74],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/CJ87-30-19315-DC.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27060"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27060"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27078,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27060\/revisions\/27078"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}