NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: History of astronomy
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2023 Mar 20, 10:07 -0700
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2023 Mar 20, 10:07 -0700
David, you wrote:
"I tried that with binoculars on the bedroom wall last transit of Mercury and failed miserably."
Eyepiece projection with binoculars works fine for a transit of Venus (mark your calendar for the next one), but you need considerably more optical power for a transit of Mercury. I've observed a Mercury transit by priojection at 60x magnification, but even then it's right at the limit. By contrast, I could see Venus in transit back in June 2012 with 1x magnification by pinhole projection through leaves (but not obvious without actual magnification).
Frank Reed
