Andrew’s Astronomy Blog

Sunday evening was bright and clear just after sunset so I went out to take some pictures of a rather pretty crescent moon. Unexpectedly, the picture also showed up the planet Mercury between the moon and the horizon and closer inspection revealed the star cluster M45 nearby as well.

The picture was taken on a Canon 350D and is a 2.5 second exposure at f/5 and ISO 1600. Focal length is 205mm. Long exposure noise reduction was done on the camera.

This one is a challenge. It’s very small and it’s always close to the sun (as well as presently being 88 million miles away!). However, as it’s approaching it’s best elongation from the sun for the year, now is the time to take pictures of it.

This one is the result of stacking about 300 frames from a video of about 2000 individual frames. A narrow band Infra-Red (742nm) filter helps to improve the contrast against the evening sky.

A wonderfully clear evening for photographing this conjunction of Mercury and the moon. Taken with a Canon EOS 350D with a 300mm lens.