The BAA has Oberservers' Challenges and at the moment there is one that has been set by John Chuter to photograph the planet Mercury at its greatest elongation in April. Mercury reaches this point on April 29th when it will be within 1.4 degrees of the Pleiades (M45). We had some very nice clear skies two days ago on the 25th April and I thought I would go and see if I could spot the planet. The sun set about 8.15pm BST and I went out to look at the west-northwest horizon about half an hour after this. Initially, I couldn't spot the planet but after going in and coming out again I did see it about 10 degrees above the horizon (a bit more than a fist at arm's length). I began taking a whole series of pictures with my Nikon D90 but the best one was the very last I took at 9.29pm which incorporated the Pleiades nicely:-
I used a Nikkor VR 18-105 f/3.5-5.6 ED lens at 105mm. This was a single shot of 2.5s at f/5.6 ISO 1600. The Pleiades is the star cluster in the upper part of the picture and Mercury is above the tree line in the lower part.
All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2022
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