Tonight after sunet, I kept shooting some photos. Venus is becoming an evening object again and Mercury is putting in an appearance as well. It took some shooting, but I got both of them together in one shot (click to enbiggen).
Venus is near the top of the photo and Mercury is almost directly beneath it (offset a touch to the right). Mercury is very dim so look close.
These to planets are going to get much closer together and be about 2 degrees apart in early November and stay that close until about mid-November. Although they are very close together, they never have a true conjunction since they never have the same right ascension. It will still be a very scenic pairing that you can watch over the next couple of weeks. Mercury will get easier to see as it rises higher in the sky. Right now, it is definitely a test of your eyesight!
Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.
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Thank you, hale, for your eyes-on-the-skies reports. With my eyes, I'll definitely have to wait till Mercury becomes brighter. Maybe I'll make a point of going out into the country on a clear night to see some of this.
I just thought of something. My last sentence above sprang from kk's mention of light pollution in another of hale's blogs. Well, with the new budget, Dickert said Racine is going to have to cut back on some of its lighting. The "bright" side of that is it may make star and planet watching easier. That's how Dickert should have pitched it: as a bow to all of Racine's astronomy fans.
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