Morning Planets over Christmas and New Year

Hi,

If it stops snowing you might get a chance to see Mercury these mornings. Mercury and Venus are close together in the sky in the South East at Dawn, Mars and Jupiter are also visible.

This Starry Night image shows where everything will be on Dec 30th:


The positions of Mercury and Venus change a lot, this movie should show you whats happening. It starts on Dec 21st and ends on January 9th. Each frame is at 8.30 am on the day.

www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/fi...-Morning-Planets.mov

The greatest elongation of Mercury is on the Dec 29th.

Cheers,
~Al

Albert,
By chance was up early this morning and it was clear with a heavy frost, I had a look out and there was venus, very bright on the eastern horison, and I could just see mercury next to it, very near by.
I took out the ETX70 and got a quick glimpse, Venus almost looks circular, nearly a full globe, Mercury was tiny, you could hardly make out the phase, but I expected that as I was was in the house looking through a window to see them, no way was I going out to the frost first thing in the morning, and besides I needed the elevation of the house to see them.
Jupiter was very bright also, if tonight/tomorrow is predicted to be clear, its worth having a look at.