Pictures of Mercury

UPDATE: I have since discovered that this planet is Venus, not Mercury!!

I’m no photographer, but i managed to capture a few nice images of Mercury this morning. I am pretty pleased with these – even my very average camera couldn’t miss Mercury today, it was so bright! Click on any picture for the full-size image.

Mercury Mercury Mercury Mercury Mercury Mercury

Shame i can’t upload them to flickr. It hasn’t been working for me for the last couple of weeks – it just times out.

Morning star Mercury

If you are in South UK today and if you read this before the Sun rises, look out of your window to the South-East, just above the trees, and you might see Mercury.

I noticed yesterday morning what i thought was a very bright star. It was just before Sunrise, the sky was already quite light, so most of the stars could no longer be seen, except for three. I thought to myself, those must be the three brightest stars in the sky, but that one is the brightest i have ever seen! I let my imagination run away and imagined it was a supernova! I thought i would get to work to read that we were all about to get eaten up by a giant exploding star!

A colleague said it might be Mercury. The closest planet to the Sun, Mercury can only be seen in the morning or evening. I looked last night at dusk but didn’t see anything, but this morning i see it again, clear as anything. It feels a great privilege to see it.