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Mercury (Planet, est. mag -0.5)
Observer: Michael Amato (e-mail: abigmick@aol.com)
Instrument: 90-mm refractor Location: West Haven, Connecticut, United States
Light pollution: moderate Transparency: fair Seeing: fair
Time: Mon Apr 14 23:50:00 2003 UT Obs. no.: 802
This evening, my friend, Joe Cseh and I set up his 90mm refractor in frigid 60 degree temperatures to observe Mercury at his house. Rather than telling each other about any albedo shadings on the planet, we decided to make seperate sketches of any albedo shadings to see if we were observing the same albedo features. When we compared the sketches, we were stunned to see that our sketches were exactly alike. There was one prominant dark area in the southern hemishere that extended out from the terminator along the equator. This feature was quite obvious. There was also a smaller lighter shaded area in the northern hemisphere way up in the polar regions. The planet's phase was about 60 to 65% gibbous.
Mercury (Planet)
Observer: Michael Amato (e-mail: abigmick@aol.com)
Instrument: 6-inch Dobsonian reflector Location: West Haven, Connecticut, United States
Light pollution: moderate Transparency: fair Seeing: fair
Time: Mon Oct 14 09:45:00 2002 UT Obs. no.: 695
This morning, I observed mercury at 200x. As Mercury climbed higher in the sky, I was able to see a dark area in the southern hemispere of Mercury. Its location was a little closer to the terminator than to the limb of Mercury.
Mercury (Planet, est. mag 0.3, est. to be in Taurus)
Observer: Dave Mitsky (e-mail: djm28@psu.edu)
Instrument: 17-inch equatorial reflector Location: Harrisburg, PA, USA
Light pollution: moderate Transparency: fair Seeing: fair
Time: Sat May 4 01:15:00 2002 UT Obs. no.: 644
On Friday evening (2002/5/4 UT) I had the good fortune to observe a very unusual event, i.e., seeing a planet and a comet at the sametime through a telescope. C/2002 F1 (Utsunomiya) and Mercury were visible in the same field of view using the 17" f/15 classical Cassegrain (144 and 202x) at the ASH Naylor Observatory (http://www.astrohbg.org). The comet (magnitude 5.7) was approximately 5' away from Mercury (magnitude 0.3) at the time andhad a fairly bright coma that was similar to Mercury in apparentsize. I could see no hint of a tail but the sky was still fairly bright at the time and both objects were not far from the horizon so that was no surprise. (Comet Utsunomiya was barely visible through the 5" f/5 finder scope.) A number of fellow ASH members and I also saw what may have been a fuel dump from an Ariane 4 rocket that carried the Spot 5 satellite into a polar orbit shortly before 02:00 UT. A "cloud" appeared suddenly from nowhere near the head of Draco and began to expand. Another comet, C/2002 C1 (Ikeya-Zhang), was prominent at 162x in the general vicinity.The planetary alignment was a sight to behold and to photograph. I used my venerable Pentax K-1000 to capture the cosmic scene. Venus, Mars, and Saturn formed a compact triangle that easily fit into the field of view of my Meade 8x42's. Although the transparency was not ideal, numerous deep-sky objects were viewed through the 17" and the 12.5" f.6.5 Cave Newtonian. I showed some new members the galaxies of Markarian's Chain in theheart of the Virgo Cluster along with some of the better late spring globular clusters such as M5 and M80, some binary stars (the other Double Double - Struve 2470 and 2474 - was popular), and the carbon stars T Lyrae and V Aquilae. Magnifications employed ranged from 118 to 259x.
Mercury (Planet)
Observer: Dave Mitsky (e-mail: djm28@psu.edu)
Instrument: naked eye Location: Harrisburg, PA, USA
Light pollution: moderate Transparency: good Seeing: poor
Time: Tue Oct 30 15:30:00 2001 UT Obs. no.: 588
Brilliant Venus and speedy Mercury, the two inner planets, are at their closest (0.59 degree apart) during their 11 day long quasi-conjunction and made a stunning pair in the southeastern sky this morning at 10:45 UT. Mercury (-0.5 magnitude), which is beginning its best morning apparition of the year, is twinkling madly as I look upon it giving lie to the often heard, but untrue, saying that planets don't.
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