Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/The transit of Mercury

Transit of Mercury

 * Reason:The high resolution image adds big encyclopedic and educational value to the articles it appears in. The rare (next one is going to be on May 6, 2016) Mercury transit over the Sun was photographed  together with three sunspots present at the time. The comparison of the sizes of Mercury and sunspots helps viewers to appreciate the enormity of the Sun itself.
 * Proposed caption:The Historical Transit of Mercury on November 8,2006. The planet Mercury appears, silhouetted against the disk of the Sun, as a small circular spot below and to the left of the solar disk.This image also show   sunspot #923, which is just below the equator at the left side of the solar disk and sunspots #921 and #922 at the right side of the solar disk.  The sunspot #923 is much bigger than Mercury is. Sunspots can be distinguished from transiting planets as dark spots, which are surrounded by plages, while a transiting planets (such as Mercury) as shown here are seen only as a dark spot.
 * Articles this image appears in:Transit of Mercury; Sunspot;Mercury
 * Creator:Mbz1


 * Support alternative 1 as nominator Mbz1 00:56, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * weak oppose Maybe encyclopedic, but I don't find it aesthetically appealing, the font size seems misproportioned and is useless in the thumb, Also the "high resolution" isn't particularly useful, since it isn't all that sharp. Debivort 02:01, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your comments,Debivort. I respect your opinion even, if I disagree with it. Wikipedia:Featured picture criteria states: A featured picture is not always required to be aesthetically pleasing; it might be shocking, impressive, or just highly informative. Wikipedia:Featured picture criteria states: an image's encyclopedic value is given priority over its artistic value.. Besides it was very aesthetically pleasing for me, when the clouds cleared up just in time to see the amazing event. I cannot agree with the comment about sharpness. It is as sharp as it gets for such photograpgs as you could see from that APOD image of a different Mercury transit. The nominated image was published at another site sponsored by NASA my image. The editor of the site e-mailed to me that they got many of images with the transit of Mercury and my image(the one that nominated here) was the best. The font size is easy to change.--Mbz1 02:22, 6 August 2007 (UTC)Mbz1
 * Well, I don't find it shocking, impressive or particularly highly informative, so aesthetics are factored in to my analysis. Debivort 03:48, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * It is OK. Everybody could have a different opinion. You as the viewer probably do not have explain your opinion to me. On the other hand I as a nominator and creater of the image have to explain my opinion to you. In my opinion the nominated image is  highly informative simply because it provides the visual ability to compare the sizes of the Sun, Mercury and the sunspots.If it is not highly informative, I'm not sure what is.--Mbz1 04:13, 6 August 2007 (UTC)Mbz1
 * Oppose I don't see that this photographic image is any more encyclopedic, or carries any more information, than an illustration would be. Since the image itself is not impressive to me, I don't believe the image should be featured.  Thank you, Mbz, for taking this image and uploading it under a free license.  It is a good contribution to the encyclopedia, but it is not a good candidate to be a featured picture.  Enuja 02:46, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your comment, Enuja. I respect your opinion even while I disagree with it. I'm not sure what illustration you are talking about. Do we have any one here at Wikipedia? As I've already mentioned earlier Wikipedia:Featured picture criteria states: A featured picture is not always required to be aesthetically pleasing; it might be shocking, impressive, or just highly informative. I believe that everybody would agree that the image is highly informative. I also believe that Wikipedia FP is not a photo contest of aesthetically pleasing images, but rather an educational and informational tool, which should prompt the viewers to want to learn more about the subject(s), which I hope the nominated image does. In my opinion it is really facinating to look at the image and to be able to compare the sizes of the Sun, Mercury and the sunspots.If this image of a very rare event(next one is going to be on May 6, 2016) that adds value to three important articles is not encyclopedic, I'm not sure what image is.Please note, I do like "opposes" as much as I like "supports" as long as the viewer clicked on the links and tried to learn more about the subject.--Mbz1 03:03, 6 August 2007 (UTC)Mbz1
 * Oppose - The useful resolution is tiny in this image, and it is not so enc that I am willing to completely overlook the lack of image quality. One test: as I zoom the image in towards 100% from a fraction of that, I don't see any more information.  Also, it doesn't actually make me want to know more because it is so bland.  Cool idea though.  Zakolantern 05:31, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose per above. Also, the pink color cast is disorienting, as we're used to seeing a yellow Sun. That said, it's an impressive photo to have personally created. --Peter 14:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Btw the color of the sun is not yellow, but white. The color's of the sun at pictures deppends on what filters were used--Mbz1 14:52, 10 August 2007 (UTC)Mbz1
 * Comment I'd like to thank you all for the comments on the image. They all are very polite and very interesting to read. Of course the color and font size are easy to change, but I do not think it would change anything, so I will not.I also like to mention that it is extremely hard to make the right focus in astro photography with a telescope involved. As a matter of fact, if there were no sunspot #923, I probably would not have been able to make the right focus. I mentioned this fact not to soften your hearts to the image, but rather because it kind of interesting(in my opinion), that the size of Mercury was not big enough to focus, while the size of a sunspot was. The most important thing I realized while reading most of your comments is that the image not only fails to impress, but also fails to prompt the viewers to want to learn more about the subjects. If it is the case, I agree with you that the image should not be displayed in Wikipedia's FP page. The only thing that I could say in my defense is that I recorded the event very accurate and exactly how I've seen it in a real life. As I said at  the beginning of this comment I really enjoy reading your opposes. Keep them coming please.--Mbz1 16:23, 6 August 2007 (UTC)Mbz1


 * Comment--why not remove the legends entirely and save them for the caption? That way, the image can also be used without difficulty on other language versions of Wikipedia.  Spikebrennan 20:15, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I've changed the colors and took the text off the image not because I hope you will support it now (if the image cannot impress, it should not be FP no matter what color it is). Still I'd like to learn your opinion which of the two images will be better for the article. Thanks.--Mbz1 22:18, 6 August 2007 (UTC)Mbz1
 * Support alternative 1 conditioned upon a suitable caption. Spikebrennan 21:52, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I did change caption. Do you believe it is better now? Thanks.--Mbz1 01:57, 8 August 2007 (UTC)Mbz1
 * May I propose an edit: "The Historical Transit of Mercury on November 8,2006. The planet Mercury appears, silhouetted against the disk of the Sun, as a small circular spot below and to the left of the solar disk.  This image also shows sunspot #923, which is just below the equator at the left side of the solar disk, and sunspots [name them] at the right side of the solar disk.  The sunspots are much bigger than Mercury is.  [is this true of all of them?] You could also see two more sunspots at the right-hand side at the equator. Sunspots can be distinguished from transiting planets as sunspots are surrounded by plages, while a transiting planet (such as Mercury as show here) are seen only as a dark spot."  The purpose of my proposed reorganization of the caption was to concentrate on describing Mercury at the beginning. Spikebrennan 11:07, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I did and yes it is better. Thank you.

Weak Oppose Pretty impressive for a home rig (what exactly did you use btw?) but the quality just isn't there. Also I prefer the way Image:Merc transit.jpg shows the actual path that it took across the sun (yours doesn't give any indication) and the ingress/egress of the event. Another advantage of a time lapse with yours would be to see how the sun spot moves --Fir0002 06:14, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm glad you've asked what I've used, which show that maybe you'll be interested to see it yourself one day (then we also could talk about image quality). Btw my only goal of nominating my pictures was to make people get interested in the subjects, (so I really like to thank you for your question). I've used Nextar 80 GTL with white light filter and with Canon XT (prime focus). In my opinion my image is better than the one you refer to simply because my image show important sunspots, while other one does not. Yet it does not matter for me what image is to pass. If I knew people would support that other image, I would have nominated it instead of mine. Would you support that other image? In any case it is great you've visited the article.Btw you cannot be serious about showing time lapse of sunspot movement. You're kidding, right? It took only about 4 hours for Mercury to transit the sun. It could take up to 28 days for a sunspot to move across the sun due to the sun's rotation (it is of course, if sunspot will not disappear before).  Here's Soho time lapse of sunspots movement. Please watch the dates changing.   -Mbz1 14:48, 8 August 2007 (UTC)Mbz1
 * Comment I've just added the animation.--Mbz1 18:10, 8 August 2007 (UTC)Mbz1
 * Comment on animation. I like it, but there's no way to tell, from the animation, that the transit took four hours, or how much time has elapsed between the images that comprise the animation.  Can you add a time-counter?  Also, the Mercury dot is nearly impossible to see in the thumbnail of the animation-- do you think that cropping the top half of the sun would help?Spikebrennan 13:52, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I do not think I could do that animation this way that it would show the right position of Mercury for a certain time. The picture is much more accurate than animation. I did the animation more like a tool in order to help viewers better understand the picture, but not to nominate it for FP.My fault. I should not have called it Alternative#2. Sorry. --Mbz1 16:53, 9 August 2007 (UTC)Mbz1

MER-C 09:32, 13 August 2007 (UTC)