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Five planets in broad daylight
I took the opportunity today to try to track down Mercury through to Saturn in broad daylight. I have tried previously but have only managed four of the five. Success today though.
Mercury - very small bright white spot against blue background. The disc was obviously not round and appeared about 3/4 illuminated.
Venus - magnificent fine crescent. Jewel like against the blue background. It’s disc is so big and imposing at this stage of it’s approach to inferior conjunction. The large non illuminated area was just visible.
Mars - still quite bright but receding quickly. A distinct, light red against the blue sky.
Jupiter - faint disc with main bands just visible.
Saturn - extremely faint. It took me several minutes at the eyepiece before I found it. Once found it was easy to re-find. The rings were quite obvious.
I then took a quick detour:
Antares - a blazing bright, distinctly red point of light against the blue sky.
Acrux - two sharp bright white points of light.
Scope - Vixen NA140SS on GPD goto mount with LVW22 giving 36X.
There was not a cloud in the sky and the seeing was reasonable.
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