It was an early morning to catch the rising sun here in the west with Mercury already close to mid-transit. My goal was to catch it with the Pine Nut Mountains silhouetted in the foreground. I set up the scope inside the night before with the plan to shoot out of a window, but when I woke up this morning I realized that my neighbor’s tree was in the way. Luckily I woke up before my alarm and had time to move the scope outside (not a trivial task). One mistake: I forgot to check the ISO, which was set at 12k for focusing on stars the night before. A little sensitive for solar photography ha ha…but it came out OK. Mercury is the little dot near center.
Here’s the setup just before sunrise, looking toward Mt. Siegel and the Galena Saddle. You can see that the sun chose to rise in the flight path for SF Bay Area traffic:
Here’s a somewhat crisper view (after bringing the ISO down to 100). I just missed the jet that left the contrail:
Scott's Sky Shots 