MAY 24TH - VENUS, MERCURY AND THE MOON

[paulastro]

I went out Sunday evening, mostly to observe both the growing (in size) and shrinking (in illumination) of Venus.   I didn't pick Venus up until 9.08 pm.  About 9 degrees to the West was the waxing Lunar crescent, with Mercury somewhere between the two.  I stayed out until 10.05 pm which was when the Moon set, and Mercury stubbornly remained invisible even in 10x50s because of haze near the horizon and the light sky.

I observed Venus until it set at 9.33pm in the SW 80ED.  It did look superb even with rather poor seeing because of the altitude, I did use mags  up to x210 but it was best at about 120, using a Baader Mk111 zoom with a X3 barlow.  (sorry to let you down on the mag front Mike 😄)  It was very striking how similar Venus and the Moon looked, both being very thin crescents.  They could have been twins apart from the brightness and scale.

Venus:    mag - 4.1, illumination 3.5%, and apparent size 55.0 arcseconds.

Moon:    mag - 2.9, Illumination 4.6% and apparent size 30.6 arcminutes - some 33 times bigger than Venus!

More importantly, the views were just beautiful.  I love to see both the Moon and Venus when they present a thin crescent, so this was  areal treat for me to have both together at the same time.

Below are some screen grabs of the conjunction below and Venus using SkySafari pro 6 and a couple of single frames taken of the Moon as it set taken with the SW 80ED and Olympus E-M5 Mk11 as the Moon set.

   

    

 

 

Edited May 25, 2020 by paulastro

[Ouroboros]

@paulastro Nice report and images. Thanks. I too had a look last night. Sadly through binoculars only as I’m socially distanced from my scope, which is 200 miles away. 😞  

Nice views though of the thin crescent Moon,  and Venus of course.  I was having to duck and dodge about a bit because there are  bushes obscuring that region of the sky for me. After a bit of searching I managed to find Mercury.  It’s always a pleasure to find Mercury because it can be tricky to see. I think I’ve only ever seen it a handful of times. 

[markse68]

Lovely moon pics- it was quite beautiful wasn’t it! I watched it setting beautifully framed by some construction cranes and stupidly ran off to get my phone and holder- it had disappeared by the time I got back 🤦‍♂️

[Littleguy80]

Nice one, Paul. It was a really lovely evening Sunday. I had some fun observing these and took some pics too. I was pleased that Marxist showed up in the first photo. 

[paulastro]

Great pictures, thanks for sharing them  🙂🔭

Edited May 28, 2020 by paulastro