Mercury

In April, Mercury appeared in our sky at a point where I was actually able to observe it for at least 30 minutes each night. I was pretty chuffed to see it as it meant that I had now been able to observe all the planets in the Solar System. However, I decided that I wanted to try and capture an image of it as well.

First up with a widefield shot which was pretty easy to capture. I actually have several now but the picture I took at Harperrig is my favourite and that is they one I am including in this blog post.

The colour of the sky due to the setting sun is wonderful as it is, but seeing Mercury shining near the horizon just adds to the image in my opinion.

Of course, I also had to try and capture the planet with my telescope, which wasn't as easy due to the lack of alignment stars. There was a fair bit a manual intervention involved in getting the telescope on target but I managed it, even if I only had about 15 minutes of time to then capture something.

To be honest, it isn't very good. The atmospheric disturbance was terrible due to how low in the horizon Mercury is and I struggled to even capture what I did. One nice thing is that you can tell the planet has a slight phase as it isn't exactly circular in shape but beyond that I can't say it is that interesting.