Mercury and Venus conjunction on 28 May

[Nik271]

Stellarium tells me that tomorrow, 28 May Venus will be within .5 degree of Mercury around 9:30pm.

I went out today armed with my 10x50 and saw them together, about a degree apart. Mercury is very faint  -around mag 2, so 100 times fainter than Venus at -3. I had to wait until about 9:30pm when both were just 5-6 degrees above the horizon. Took some photos but haven't moved them to my laptop yet. Mercury was invisible with naked eye so relied on binoculars.

If you have clear north west horizon tomorrow give it a try! I think around 9:30 to 10pm is the best time.

 

Clear skies, hopefully!

 

Nik

[Knighty2112]

Saw Venus tonight in my binos at 9pm, so could only see it thru the binos as still way too light for naked eye views, so couldn’t make out Mercury. Sadly by the time it would have been dark enough to see Mercury with the binos both it and Venus would be well below the roof top of the bungalow next to me. Might have a drive out to a place with a better view of the horizon to nab them both tomorrow. 👍🏻

[Pete Presland]

I have also had a couple of views of Venus just after Sunset, a very easy spot and naked eye for me by about 9.30. I happy hoping i should be able to spot them both before they set, but the clouds do seem to have a habit of being in that part of the sky at the moment

[Nik271]

I transferred my photos and managed to find Mercury on them! It was easier in the binoculars, but still unexpectedly faint against the still bright sky. Looking at the timestamp I got the best images around 10pm, which means Venus was just about 4 degrees above the horizon and sinking in haze and cloud:

 

And cropped to show the two planets:

Today they should be even closer, but my weather prospect does not look promising. Asking for a clear horizon down to 4 degrees is just too much from this weather. 

Nik

[John]

Thanks for the heads up Nik

Not a promising forecast here either today so I suspect I'll miss this conjunction as well, unless I get extremely lucky

It's amazing how often, even if the rest of the sky is clear, that there is an unhelpful cloud bank off to the west (down the Severn Estuary in my case) that gets in the way !

Last years conjunction was also close (.9 of a degree) but clouded out for the actual closest approach as well. I snapped with my old mobile at the scope eyepiece these a couple of days before:

 

 

 

Edited May 28, 2021 by John

[Nik271]

Nice images, John! It's always an impressive feat to image Mercury in a telescope, requires a careful choice of location, luck with clouds, experience to find and photograph.

Once they go down to 5 degrees in altitude the light path through the thick air increases 10 times and more, so the seeing goes down dramatically, even without clouds.

And in addition the chance of hitting a cloud with the longer light path increases proportionally to its length.

This year Venus will be difficult too as @CentaurZ has plotted for us.

Jupiter holds the best promise, it should get as high as 25 degrees in opposition.

 

Edited May 28, 2021 by Nik271
typos corrected

[Peter_D]

I caught this conjunction by chance I'm embarrassed to admit! Wasn't planning on observing but noticed Venus extremely low on the horizon (in the only gap I have to the west luckily). I quickly setup my C-90 Mak on a Slik-67 tripod - nearly at full extension. When I focused on Venus with the 25mm eyepiece, I was really surprised to see Mercury close by. Unfortunately I could only observe them for a couple of minutes they were so low. Better planning required for next time I think!

[Nik271]

38 minutes ago, Peter_D said:

I caught this conjunction by chance I'm embarrassed to admit! Wasn't planning on observing but noticed Venus extremely low on the horizon (in the only gap I have to the west luckily). I quickly setup my C-90 Mak on a Slik-67 tripod - nearly at full extension. When I focused on Venus with the 25mm eyepiece, I was really surprised to see Mercury close by. Unfortunately I could only observe them for a couple of minutes they were so low. Better planning required for next time I think!

Well done! Observing in gaps in the clouds is great fun and you have a really portable set up there.

It was 100% cloud and drizzle here sadly.

[Cosmic Geoff]

I saw Venus yesterday (29th) at about 9.30 pm with the naked eye, though it was not conspicuous.  I knew Mercury was supposed to be very close but could not see it with binoculars or even with a 102mm refractor.  But Mercury is about 6 magnitudes fainter.

I saw Venus again this evening (30th) but again no Mercury visible with binoculars.

[Nik271]

10 hours ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

I saw Venus yesterday (29th) at about 9.30 pm with the naked eye, though it was not conspicuous.  I knew Mercury was supposed to be very close but could not see it with binoculars or even with a 102mm refractor.  But Mercury is about 6 magnitudes fainter.

I saw Venus again this evening (30th) but again no Mercury visible with binoculars.

I tried too on the evening of 29-th but while Venus was easy to see Mercury was not visible even in binoculars. Being so much fainter and now lower on the horizon than Venus (its only at 6 degrees altitude at 9:30pm) I think observing is pretty much over for this apparition of Mercury. The next one is in the week of 9-th July, in the morning.