Explanation: Enjoying Wednesday’s transit of Mercury from Dallas, Texas, astronomer Phil Jones recorded this detailed image of the Sun. Along with a silhouette of the innermost planet, a network of cells and dark filaments can be seen against a bright solar disk with spicules and prominences along the Sun’s edge. The composited image was taken through a telescope equiped with an H-alpha filter that narrowly transmits only the red light from hydrogen atoms. Such images emphasize the solar chromosphere, the region of the Sun’s atmosphere immediately above its photosphere or normally visible surface. Left of center, the tiny disk of Mercury seems to be imitating a small sunspot that looks a little too round. But in H-alpha pictures, sunspot regions are usually dominated by bright splotches (called plages) on the solar chromosphere.
I knew Mercury was a bit left of center. And I don’t have a problem with that…it’s not all the way to the left, still nicely in that “middle ground.”
What does surprise me though is the fact that there’s an astronomer in Dallas Tx. I lived there for most of my life and I remember the vast majority of the night sky being drowned out by the glow of the city lights.
Gonna make a dope of myself by expressing a bit of childish wonder here. There’s the image of the sun, looking so innocuous, like nothing so much as a closeup of some sort of citrus. But it’s a star. There’s a colossal nuclear reactor inside it; the sun’s surface is around 11,000°F, and that’s the cool and calm part. From here, 91 million miles away, we can’t look at our star with the naked eye and not promptly go blind. Those fluffy little prominences at the edge there could probably swallow our whole planet. And yet…we’re able to make photographs, like this one, that let us study the sun’s structure and complexity and marvel at it. That’s amazing.
scottielvr It’s not so amazing when you remember it’s ninety THREE million miles, not 91. That makes a huge difference doesn’t it?
I think “Mercury and the Chromospheres” would be a great name for a band.
I’m in AU of your knowledge. 
[groan]Ooooo, that’s bad, Steve![/groan]
djm
Well this fellow apparently only studies stars during the day time.
Well, dang, Fly…Perihelion, aphelion… I’m a-phelion kinda silly now. How 'bout we split the difference… it’s only a couple million miles, after all. 
Yup, it’s just down the road from me.