Help Spotting Mercury

[OzDave]

Hi,

At the moment, the sun has just set below the horizon, but the western sky is still quite bright, I can see the Moon and Venus very clearly.

According to some planetary software I have, Mercury should be visible at a bearing somewhere between Venus and where the sun has set at an altitude of about 10 deg. at the present time.

Mars and Saturn should be between the moon and Venus, but neither are currently visible.

I'm wondering if I should be able to see Mercury with the naked eye, or does the sky need to be considerably darker? Unfortunately, once the sky does get darker, Mercury will have moved closer to the horizon and will be obscured by some smog and clouds.

Is there a trick to spotting Mercury? I guess you need to catch it at exactly the right moment with sufficient darkness and clear horizon, but I don't really know what I'm looking for.

How does it appear relative to Venus which seems to glow extremely brightly? What about relative to Mars / Saturn? I'm asking principally about a naked eye sighting.

Any help much appreciated!

David

[Doc]

Mercury is only 0.4 mag so it needs to be a little dark to spot it. venus is -4.1 mag so very easy to see.

[hunterknox]

Mercury is definitely a lot more tenuous than venus in the twilight. Watch the sun go down, persevere, and once you spot it you'll wonder how you missed it. If you can focus your eyes to infinity that might help.

Good luck!

[ollypenrice]

I found it by panning in binoculars in the right (ish) area. Then we got a scope onto it.

Olly

[OzDave]

As it turns out, I managed to spot by scanning the horizon in the expected place by eye. I caught a glimpse of something with averted vision, so grabbed a 9x50 finder for a closer look. Unfortunately, Mercury was right on the horizon cloud boundary at that point, but I was able to get a brief glimpse through the finder.

Now I know what to look for it'll be easier next time!

[yeti monster]

I've been luck enough to see mercury on several occasions, this time around. Once you know where to look, it becomes very easy to spot with nekkid eye.

I haven't bothered unpacking my scope from the last typhoon though, as we've been rather busy, and I crew change tomorrow. Hoping to collect some new EPs on the way through town, although communications have been poor, to say the least, so I really don't know whether they will be there or not!

[brianb]

Mercury's current elongation is especially bad for northern hemisphere viewers because it is well south of the Sun. Evening elongation in March April or early May is good, so is morning elongation in October or November. The current elongation is a good one for southern hemisphere observers, it's also pretty reasonable if you can find it in full daylight: the image I posted this week was made when Mercury was just about crossing the meridian.