Mercury and the Crescent Moon
September 20, 2005
Provided and copyright by: John Chumack, Miami Valley Astronomical Society
Summary authors & editors: John Chumack
While many stargazers were busy watching Venus and Jupiter in the evening sky, I decided to capture the conjunction of Mercury and the Moon in the morning sky, on September 2. An unusually bright Mercury and the waning crescent Moon were reclining only 8 degrees above the roese-colored eastern horizon. Note the Cheshire grin of this very old crescent -- at this time only 1.57% of the Moon's surface was illuminated.
Photo details: Canon 10D, 180mm lens at F5.6, 400 ISO,1 sec. exposure while mounted on a tripod. The photo was taken about 5:45 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time from my front porch in Dayton, Ohio
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