Mercury and Venus Conjunction
| On 27th June 2005 at 16:01GMT Venus and Mercury
came within 3.9 arcminutes of each other (S&T 06/05 p56). For once the
weather was extremely kind, there wasn't a cloud in the sky all day and
the seeing was good. I took this image at 19:43GMT when the planets were
separated by 4.7 arcminutes and lay in an almost exactly north south line.
Their altitude was 18.5°. Mercury is clearly resolved and was 61%
illuminated. Venus is gibbous at 91.5% illuminated with the terminator on
the left. The image is a stack of about 100 frames obtained with the
ToUCam and LX200 at f6.3. |
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The image below was taken with a camcorder at 20:55GMT and is a stack
of 250 frames. The area around Mercury was enhanced in Registax.
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Mercury Mercury is always
hard to observe. It only appears low in the sky after sunset or just before
sunrise. The image showing Mercury setting over a chimney is a typical view. No
surface details are ever visible through the telescope and the only hope is to
capture the moon like phases. On rare occasions Mercury can transit the
Sun. During 2003 I was lucky enough to see a transit although it was almost
clouded out. The Sun appeared for
about 5 minutes throughout the event. However I was ready
with a Meade ETX70 with solar filter and a camcorder. Subsequently frames were
assemble in Registax.
Mercury 19:00 16/04/03
LX200 and CamCorder with 18mm eyepiece. Mercury was just less than half
phase and at greatest elongation. |
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Mercury 14/05/08 19:40 LX200 and ToUcam at f10. Enlarged x2 |
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Venus
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Venus is by far the brightest planet in the sky and can even cast a
shadow under dark skies. Visually Venus shows no surface detail through
the telescope or in any unfiltered photograph.
The planet does however show phases just like the moon.
On June 8th 2004 there was a transit of Venus. As usual Manchester
skies were cloudy but only 30 miles or so south I managed to observe the
transit with my 70mm Meade ETX. The full solar disk images below were
taken with a video camera linked to the ETX. Later in the transit
Manchester did have some sunshine and I observed the transit egress
through the LX200
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17:38GMT 04/03/01. LX200 image
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