The Astronomy Centre was ready.......the equipment was prepared.......visitors,members and staff attending and anticipating the forthcoming rare event event, but.....the Pennine weather ruled the day!

During preparations on the morning of the 11th the cloudy and wet weather seemed to be breaking up and we were more optimistic of a successful observation of the long awaited Mercury Transit across the face of the sun.

Peter had prepared 150mm refractors, a 200mm reflector with white light filters, 70 and 150mm Hydrogen Alpha telescopes. A live view camera attached to one of the 150mm refractors fed an image to the large screen monitor.

To complement our preparations the AC provided an Internet feed showing the live event streaming services from observatories across the world. This was just as well because around the time of the predicted first  contact our local clouds rolled in to completely obscure the solar disk. Observers all turned to the Internet relays to see the tiny disk of Mercury creep onto the giant solar disk. We still hoped for a glance at the `real thing` using the AC equipment during the afternoon but apart for a fleeting image on the monitors of racing clouds, nothing further was seen. Observers had to content themselves with the streaming Internet images- better than nothing.

All ages of visitors attended from 2 years old to 70 +, AC members keepng the group informed and entertained as best as possible. The weather threw everything at the site during the afternoon, hail, wind, rain and even a glimpse of blue sky - but in the wrong place.

See you for the next one in 2032?

 Thanks to Paul Yates who found a gap in the clouds over Oakworth, West Yorkshire to capture Mercury just after T2

 early in the transit. Well done Paul... a fine effort under difficult conditions.