[Friends_of_SSASTROS] The Mercury and Venus Show

[Mike McCabe]

Greetings Fellow Intrepid Observers,
The inner planets in our solar system are putting on a nice display for us late this month, and I got out this evening for a preview. Venus (-3.9m) was easily visible to the naked eye by 20 minutes after sunset, and Mercury (-.49m) followed by popping out 20 minutes later. Binoculars made finding the duo much easier in the bright twilight right after sunset (as did a compass and a mobile planetarium app, which were used to identify the general azimuth direction).
In this image snapped right around 5pm, Venus can be seen hovering just above the trees while Mercury shines to the left of and above it. I often find that a simple observation like this can bring relatively significant satisfaction. It's just nice to be out in the calm air (if not a wee bit cool, yes) watching the cosmos do its thing, and it's also nice to climb back into the truck that I left running with the heat on while I conducted the observation.  LOL!
Normally I would sign off with "Keep Looking Up", but in this case is seems more apropos to say Keep Looking Horizontal!
I just crack myself up.
:-)

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ssastros.org/pipermail/friends_of_ssastros_ssastros.org/attachments/20221220/3adb6ba6/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 1671576806288blob.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 806660 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://ssastros.org/pipermail/friends_of_ssastros_ssastros.org/attachments/20221220/3adb6ba6/attachment.jpg>