Observation by Mike Scarisbrick: Mercury February 2019

Uploaded by

Mike Scarisbrick

Observer

Mike Scarisbrick

Observed

2019 Feb 25 - 18:50

Uploaded

2019 Mar 07 - 07:07

Objects

Mercury

Equipment

Canon 500D
55mm focal length

Exposure

f 5.6, 5 seconds, ISO1600

Location

Cambridgeshire UK

Target name

Mercury

Title

Mercury February 2019

About this image

3 images of Mercury taken on consecutive days (25th, 26th and 27th February) from approximately the same place at approximately the same time of day (18:50). There is a road just in front of the camera, so times are "traffic permitting". To the bottom left is Bluntisham Water tower, whose features provided a handy image alignment reference. At the top of the image is the magnitude 4 start 28 Pisces. The top left of the line of three instances of this star was from 25th February, bottom right obviously 27th. A bit lower and to the right 17 Pisces is performing the same inexorable year long journey back to where it started from (relatively speaking). Mercury of course is not doing this, the lower left instance is from the 25th.

Some stars were lost, and the twilight brightened up, as unwanted side effects of merging these three images.

The 25th February was staggeringly clear down to the horizon - I've never seen Mercury so bright so low.

Files associated with this observation

February2019ElongationOfMercuryC_BAA.jpg (90.7 kB)

Like this image

Graham Winstanley, Jeremy Shears, Andy Wilson, Andrew Paterson, Andrew Dumbleton, Mike Scarisbrick, Alan Thomas

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