The Moon and Mercury, May 6, 2008

If you were clouded out or forgot to check for the conjunction of Mercury with a very young Moon tonight - well, don't worry. I've got you covered!

Mercury to the lower left of the Moon, 8:35 PM on May 6, 2008. Note the clouds rolling in. The seeing did not look especially promising as a large bank of clouds rolled in shortly after sunset. This was just a few minutes after I had managed to spot Mercury - and shortly afterwards, it was lost in thick clouds.
The Moon and Mercury, May 6 2008, 9:08 PM. After playing hide-and-seek in the clouds for what felt like hours but was more like a half hour, the Moon and the innermost planet had set below the line of houses across the street. I had to abandon my traditional photo spot, a mini-tripod set up atop a car in our driveway, and retreat to higher ground - namely, a swing set on a small hill in the back yard. I set the tripod up so it straddled the crossbeam of the swing set and clicked a photo of the Moon every minute or so as a train of clouds passed below it. I was hoping I would catch Mercury in one of the photos, and sure enough I did. Though I had a hell of a time finding it: I had to switch each image to negative and then blow up the area to the lower left of the Moon, looking for a dark smudge against the white negative sky. One - and only one - photo had this feature, but it was barely visible when I switched back to positive mode. I had to crank the contrast waaaaaay up to get the image above.

So, there you go. If you missed the opportunity to see Mercury tonight, you have a few days left to see it - though good luck finding it without the Moon nearby as a convenient pointer!