Redditch astronomer, Taylor, captures magical Mercury transit - The Redditch Standard

Redditch astronomer, Taylor, captures magical Mercury transit

Redditch Editorial 14th May, 2016 Updated: 18th Oct, 2016   0

REDDITCH amateur astronomer Andy Taylor beat the grey and murky weather of Monday to capture the transit of Mercury across the face of the Sun from the back garden of his Woodrow home.

Having abandoned using a telescope because of the weather he managed to capture the solar system’s smallest planet during a break in the cloud.

“I was lucky enough to be working from home and kept dashing out every so often and I’d pretty much given up it was so hit and miss,” said Andy, who works for the Law Society.

But at about 3pm the clouds parted and, using a homemade filter made from a cardboard tube and a piece of foil on his tripod mounted camera, got the picture he was after.




“I’d not done anything like this before, not in the daytime anyway, I’d done a bit on the solar eclipse last year, but usually just pictures of the planets at night,” said Andy, who only combined his passion for astronomy and photography just over a year ago.

“It’s not great in Redditch, not with one of those big street lights at the other end of the garden, and I’ve packed up all the stuff and got in a car before and driven off to find somewhere darker,” he said.


Now after taking photographs of the Milky Way while on holiday in Tenerife his ambition is to picture it here in the UK.

“This is something I’ve always wanted to do since I was a kid and I thought, well, it’s now or never.”

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