Welcome to Tenerife ladies and gentlemen! After 800m turn ... Today is the 10th of November 2019 and we are on Canary Islands, Tenerife. In a beautiful volcanic landscape.
For one special reason. To photograph and to capture a unique Mercury transit in a special way. So today is the day, where we are practising. We are going for location scouting.
And let`s see if it will work out for us. We have a special project. And tomorrow is THE DAY! We hope for the best! We hope for the same weather conditions. We have a blue sky. Very good seeing. Perfect weather conditions. So let`s see what the next day will bring.
We have a sunset now and you can see the line between light and dark. I have to be there tomorrow. I have to position myself in this way, so that the Sun, mercury, our photo model and me as a photographer would exactly line up. It is exactly 6:00 p.m. local time. The sun has just set. That means that for the transit of Mercury tomorrow we should have done everything perfectly by 6:00 p.m.
If it would not work by 6:00 p.m., then our project was unsuccessful! The sky looks good. The seeing is perfect. Not a single cloud. I hope that the same conditions we will find tomorrow as well. Let`s see... I`m here! Look here... Look here... I`m here! Can you wave back at me?
I see you! I`m filming you already! Perfect! Someone is filming me... That's cool. Today is November 11, 2019. We are on Tenerife. Today is a Transit of Mercury! In a few hours we will try to photograph this transit of Mercury through triangulation with a photo model. Right now we are driving through the cloud cover at an altitude of 2200 meters. You can see that the sun comes through. It's cloudless there.
Then we are above the clouds and hopefully will get a clear blue sky. Yes, as you can see, there is the Teide volcano and we have a blue sky. We are above the cloud cover. It looks really great. And in a few hours the Transit of Mercury will occure.
From this position we have the azimuth of 245 degrees. That is towards Teide. But we have no perspective here. Here would be the sun exactly over the top of Teide volcano. The problem here is 245 degree over Teide. It will not work out.
We need another location. We need to move on to the first location. Let´s stop here. This is indeed a Mercury. We have mercury contact with the solar disk. This is definitely a Mercury. That looks really great. I will take a photo now.
Now you can see that particularly well. We are approximately 2200 meters above sea level. As you can see, we are above the clouds. Transparent, clear sky. Good seeing.
There is Teide. We have a Transit of Mercury right now! It looks very nice. A pitch black little point. 245... 245... This is Teide. We can`t use this location.
The first and the second contact of Mercury have already happened. We have Mercury exactly in solar disk. We have to move to the second location. It's too shallow. The sponsor of our video is Coca Cola. We are in the middle of Mercury Transit. We are able to see so many people, so many tourists here.
It's really interesting that they don't know about the transit of Mercury at all. You don't see any telescopes there. No observers. Nothing like that. The people here have no idea that there is a Transit of Mercury going on right now. It`s really sad.
We are at National Park Teide right now. And now I will tell you how to survive in a harsh environment like this. First of all, you need water. We have poured the water into two differerent bottles, since we both will be at two different locations from each other. Everyone needs to have a food with him.
As long as we have a break. Im eating very delicious cookies. And of course you will need have ... ... radio communication ... Communication radius is within of 10 kilometers. It's very usefull tool. I simply love the sound of crunching earth under my feet . What a pleasant sound! We take a break.
We have 3:30 pm local time. It`s in the middle of Mercury transit. The weather is really beautiful. Without any clouds. But as you can see, we have really strong wind. Probably video will be an issue. But photography should be fine. The sun moves so fast because we are in southern declinations. o.k., 4K...
Mercury is almost in the middle of the transit. We have the Transit of Mercury in full swing. It's a bit windy here, but it's okay... I think I can live with that..
Also we are in the shadow of the hill. You can guess from the look on my face that our mission was successful. My wife were standing on... I'll try to show it. Here is the Teide volcano. And this is the location where "Star Wars" was filmed. My wife was standing right here at this point.
At this top of the mountain. She had to run up the entire mountain. She was standing right there on the mountain. The mission was super successful.
I'm a little out of breath. You can imagine: the sun went down right there under the mountains. I had to hike from down in the valley up here. Every time I had to change quickly my position. Because the Canary Islands are at 28 degrees north latitude.
That means that here the sun goes relatively steeply behind the horizon. I also had to change my position relatively quickly. Moreover I have to say that it was very, very windy up there on the mountain. It was also very cold for my wife.
But she stood up bravely. She stood up there for at least hour. I hope she doesn't catch a cold. The good thing is that we in fact have taken very good pictures! Filmed in 4K video with X-T2 and Fujinon 100-400mm tele photo lens.
With 2.0 tele converter. That means we got a focal length of 1200mm. real time with the Merkur Transit. A real time video with a Transit of Mercury. Mercury was very small. But at this focal length it can be seen relatively easily. Mission completed. I am super happy about it.
I am very grateful that my wife made this possible, especially as a photo model. It's a team work. The photographer plays only a 50% role here. The remaining 50% is photo model. It wasn't that easy. It was difficult. But I am glad that we managed this mission successfully. I would say: "Roger, over and see you next time!"
2021-03-01