Mercury at Sunset

Mercury should be visable at sunset for the next two weeks or more. Tonite at sunset from San Diego it will be close to 20 degrees above the horizon and close to the ecliptic (path of the sun).

25 minutes after sunset it should be still nearly 15 degrees above the horizon and visable depending on your conditions. I normally start looking 10 or 15 minutes after sunset with binoculars or a scope finder.

Mercury is interesting because if the seeing is decent, you can see the phases, currently it is about 55% illuminated and that will be dropping rather quickly over the next weeks.

I enjoy beginning the evening with Mercury or Venus..

Jon

Just an Update:

Last night the Gods of the Clear Sky prevailed and it was windy but clear.

Mercury was shining bright and easily seen naked eye about 30 minutes after sunset. The atmosphere was too turbulent to make out the phase.

Higher in the western sky were Mars and Saturn and in the southern sky of course was Jupiter. Mars and Saturn are within 3 degrees of each other and in that FOV is the Beehive.

Definitely worth a look if only to see 4 planets (5 if you count the earth 8) ) in the same sky.

Another notable observation was NGC6210, a mag 9.0 Planetary 4 degrees from Beta Hercules. With the bright moon and some haze, beta Hercules at Mag 2.8 was barely visable but the NGC6210 was nice and bright in a 6 inch Newtonian at about 60x and was clearly non-stellar. It is always surprising how well Planetaries standup to light pollution and just keep on shining.

jon