Mercury transit
2016-05-09 
Finally the day was here! Both me and Leif took the day off from work to photograph the Mercury transit. The next one (that will have as good properties) won't be until in 2048, so we'd really wanted to take this shot. We had been talking and preparing for this transit for a long time, so we we're hoping that we would (at least once) get good weather. With some unimaginable luck there was a high pressure system all over northern Europé at that time, and we basically had mid-summer-weather in the beginning of May! There was almost not a single cloud on the sky for the whole day. This basically gave us an excellent view of the entire mercury transit! This image is a combination of two exposures (one short one for solar disk, and one long one for solar prominences), and Mercury is visible in the lower end of the sun as a small black disk. Even though Mercury was closer to us than the sun at this moment (duh), this gives you a little perspective of how huge the sun is. We had a truly great day! 
Date: 2016-05-09 / 12:15:28 UTC
Location: Ekerö, Sweden
Temperature: 25 °C
Telescope: Lunt LS60THa
Camera: QHY5-II-M
Mount: Skywatcher NE6 Pro Synscan
Other info: 50% of 305 frames. Gain=200. Shutter=2.5ms (for sun disk) and 25ms (for prominences). ROI=1280X1024. 15FPS. Enlarged with a factor of 1.5X.
Processing: Captured in Firecapture 2.4, stacked in AutoStakkert 2.1.0.5, processed in Photoshop CS6