Mercury

2022 Due to its close orbit to the sun, Mercury is visible to the naked eye only around twilight. When the sky is clear, Mercury can appear quite prominent, because usually, no other bright star is discernible agains the sky yet. So probably many people may have seen Mercury once or then without knowing it.

I made several attemtps to capture Mercury during such a morning or evening visibility, hoping for moments of clam air in the usually very bad seeing conditions near the horizon, but that never worked. But then I manged to observe Mercury in daylight during a 4-day long clear sky period in April 2022. The comparison with satellite photos from WinJupos shows, that a 6" optics can resolve real detail, if the conditions allow it. E.g. crater Kuiper appears as prominent white spot in the image. The 4-day animation on the right additionally illustrates Mercurys slow rotation.

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