Late Spring Inferior Planets

 

 

I eyed up Mercury on the previous evening side apparition and failed to find it in the daytime.  Setting up the CGE and 14" during the day was too error ridden on alignment and I slewed and slewed in the hot sun endlessly to find nothing on 3x different days!  I decided, while this apparition wasn't as high in altitude, that morning would allow a stellar alignment and better opportunities.  Also having the 14" on the CEM120 was way too easy compared to no stellar align on the CGE!

 

Here's Mercury

https://i.imgur.com/Rq7HZPe.png



 

 

I'm not 100% certain but I spent some time learning the lat/long system for Mercury in WinJUPOS and comparing to the USGS / IAU / NASA's atlas pages.  I do think I can spot part of Lugus Planitia or possibly the Water's crater (-15Lat / 106Long), the white spotted area seen in H7 - https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/images/H-7.pdf

 

While the seeing was poor I was quite happy to see Mercury and it's phase for the 1st time in 4 years.  Also of note, it's a derotation (not really needed I know) of 3x captures of 90s each and a stack of 2000 of the best frames.

 

 

Here's Venus

https://i.imgur.com/K4QuMCa.png



 

 

False color is a substitute following:

 

Red=InfraRed

Green= 50%/50% (1:1) mix of IR and UV

Blue=UltraViolet

 

See all previous years here:

• 1 - Mercury
• All
• Imgur https://imgur.com/a/xL4Kszf
• Google Photos

 

• 2 - Venus
• All
• Imgur -https://imgur.com/a/SG7ezvf
• Google Photos - https://photos.app.goo.gl/aLMsf6Rytm7A5KNj9