Mercury and Venus 0.8° Apart
Taken by Helio C. Vital on July 17, 2016 @
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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Details:
The animation and photos show Mercury and Venus a few minutes before setting, roughly one day after their closest approach and half an hour after sunset. Venus is seen about 15 times brighter than Mercury. It has already become an easy naked-eye target, while the elusive planet still remains at the threshold of visibility. I could glimpse it 3 times for a couple of seconds each after the end of civil dusk (during the animation) and that was only possible because I knew exactly where to look for it. The two major inferior planets were only 0.8° apart and their mean distance from the Sun was 11.7°. Note that their apparent paths are not very inclined to the vertical direction. Such condition is favoring observations of the conjunction from the Southern Hemisphere. Also note the fast darkening of the background sky as the departing Sun reaches 6° below Rio`s West-northwestern horizon. A Canon PowerShot SX60 HS camera was used for the shots with zoom magnifications ranging from 30 to 150 times. The vivid color mode of the camera was selected to highlight the colors of the evening twilight. Post-Processing involved cropping, resizing and making the animated gif. The still images were produced by stacking 3 - 5 photos with Registax. Also, brightness and sharpness of some still images were slightly adjusted with PhotoScape. The photos were taken between 17:47 and 17:50, while the animation covers the time period from 17:50 until 17:58. Sunset occurred at 17:27. All times informed are UTC-3h.
Photographer's website:
http://https://www.flickr.com/photos/98669508@N03/
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