I have never, ever been able to locate Mercury…even when conditions are ideal. Besides waiting for times of greatest elongation, any other pointers to help me find it? - Jinx
Oh, poop. Here I was going to tell all about the beautiful mercury fountain at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona.
I haven’t seen it myself, but I can give you a hint about planet spotting in general: If you live in a large city, with lots of bright lights shining into the sky, then you will have difficulty locating it. You have a much better chance if you are out in the middle of nowhere, where there isn’t any artificial light.
Well, also, I could stare at a thermometer a little harder… - jinx
I’ve spotted mercury! After staring in the sun for 10 minutes, all I could see is blinding white except this one circle that has just GOT to be where Mercury is!
err wait no that’s my optic disk sorry!
Well, I spotted it for the first and only time last spring when that big planetary alignment in the western sky occurred (April 2002). It helps a lot when you have a reference point ahead of time of where Mercury should appear, then just wait for it to pop out of the dusk. Using this method, its probably easier to spot it popping out of the dusk in the evening rather than trying to catch it before dawn washes it out at sunrise.
The night that I spotted it, it was brighter than I expected it would be. I expected nothing more than a faint dot, but once I spotted it I had to second guess myself, thinking it might be a star. But it was Mercury. So, hurrah for me, I finally ticked it off my list.
–
Oh, my favorite Hg experience occurred in fifth grade when someone in my class broke an old fashioned mercury thermometer during science class. We all gathered around the little balls that formed before our teacher quickly herded us away. This was about 1984…had it happened a few years later the school probably would have been shut down and turned into a Superfund site…as it happened the janitor was called and that was that.
“A large fistful of sawdust / Is my essential tool.” – The Janitor Song - MST3K
All the time. My mother worked for UH Hilo’s Astronomy department and would point it out often.
Yes.
It’s only visible for a few minutes after sunset when it’s in the correct position. It was particularly easy to find at the time I saw it because all of the planets fall in a straight line from our standpoint (since we are seeing the ecliptic plane edge-on). Once you spot a couple of planets, such as Jupiter and Venus, it’s easy to connect the dots with the place where the Sun was and find Mercury (if it’s on the same side), very close to the horizon. It can be seen without a telescope.
Of course, I was at my dad’s astronomy club at the time, where there were lots of knowlegable folks who pointed it out to me.
I watched the transit on a live webcast a couple weeks ago, but that probably doesn’t count.
I’ve seen Mercury! I saw it last April with the sun just gone down, a little teeny wee orangey dot of a planet right by the horizon. I saw it from my bedroom window.
7 May would have been your best chance. Mercury-Sun transits like that hardly ever happen.
Yes. Once you find it the first time, it will be easy to find later.
Having a cloudless sky and a relatively clear horizon helps because, whether in morning or evening, it’s always very close to the horizon.
Seems like we had a really amazing early morning appearance not too long ago, where it was very far removed from the Sun and shown out quite nicely in a much darker area of sky than usual. Anyone else remember this?
Also, for the OP, get Sky & Telescope. Then, you’ll always know where to look.
Actually, that’s not true at all, at least with respect to the bright planets - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They are very easily visible in cities. They’re far too bright to be drowned out by any light pollution, and since light pollution will drown out most stars the planets actually stand out MORE. Jupiter’s four Galilean moons and Saturn’s moon titan are also easily discerned in a small telescope from the middle of a city. I get beautiful views of the five bright planets and said moons from my apartment in the middle of Toronto.
For Neptune, Uranus and Pluto, which are relatively dim, dark skies are needed.
I’ve spotted Mercury a number of times from here.
I was really looking forward to that transit, too. Stupid tornados ruined it for me. Hard to see a transit through a tornadic mesocyclone.
As for the five naked eye planets, they are indeed easy to spot once you know what to look for and (as with Mecury), where to look.
An older Sky & Telescope article once proposed that Neptune had been a naked eye planet before the industrial era, but had not been ID’ed as a planet (wanderer) because of its slow movement coupled with its dim apparant magnitude.
I’ve seen it a couple of times. Never had any luck observing Uranus, though, despite the fact that it’s supposedly visible to the naked eye.
Yeah, a few times. It was cool. Not hard to spot either, if you know where to look.