This years best conjunction yet!

Seanie, I'd say it was venus you saw ( by far the brighter of the pair)...I was out again tonight and still failed in my quest to see saturn. Mercury was real close to venus tonight, but again was beyond naked eye visibility. Low lying haze and a bright red sunset prevented any glimpse of Saturn. It was interesting to see how much mercury seemed to have moved relative to venus in 24 hrs. Did anybody get to see Saturn in same field of view as Venus and Mercury

I had a great view here from Bray in Co Wicklow tonight at 22:14 Mercury, Venus and Saturn approx 10 degrees above horizon and going down fast. Clear sky no clouds just beautiful. I set up my EXT 70 with the 25mm lens but could not distinguish Mercury from Venus as they were just too close together I put in the 12 mm lens but still no separation.Saturn sat just beneath and a bit lower to the right and Saturn set form my view at 22:49 followed almost right away by Mercury and Venus. On both Saturday and Sunday the spectical was clouded out.

Managed to see the trio last night myself around 22:35hrs between cloud. I was able to get them all in my 12mm eyepiece on the ETX-70. Very nice sunset reds added to the display! But it wasn't clear enough between clouds to take the time to do a sketch.

Seanie.

I set up my EXT 70 with the 25mm lens but could not distinguish Mercury from Venus as they were just too close together I put in the 12 mm lens but still no separation.

Hi Deirdre

I managed to separate Mercury and Venus very easy in a pair of 10X50's binocs, so you should have had no bother with the 70mm

On the other hand, I failed to even see saturn at all with 1050's or with the 70mm skylux and a 32mm eyepiece.

I guess I will have to wait til the next time

Well the clouds finally parted down the west for the first time in almost two weeks to give great views of the conjuntion. Like the others i failed also to see Saturn although the camera may have picked it , also i forgot to reduce the image size, sorry.



June 27th 11.30pm



Ronan Newman
Vice Chairman
Galway Astronomy Club

Myself and Kevin Lawlor got some images of the conjunction but neither of us saw Saturn, there was always cloud of haze in the way.

Images at www.kerryastronomyclub.com/gallery.htm#plan

Michael Scully KAC