Mercury, Venus, Moon & Neptune.

[glenc]

Mercury and Venus were next to each other this morning. On Thursday morning 6/3 Mercury, Venus, the crescent 4.6% phase Moon and Neptune will be together in the eastern sky. The map below is from SkyMapPro for 6/3 at 5:30 am DST here. Neptune is the dot above the N. Mercury is 4 degrees above Neptune. The Moon will be 381,000 km away on Thursday and Neptune 4,630,000,000 km away. That is 1.3 sec and 4 hrs 17 min at the speed of light. Binoculars will show all 4 objects.

[citivolus]

Mercury and Venus were quite an impressive little light show this morning when I stumbled outside. I'll have to make a note for Thursday morning :)

[glenc]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0803/planetalignment_white_big.jpg
The telescopes were pointing to Cen A (NGC 5128) at time. An astronomer in Germany was controlling them.
Graeme was observing by remote control with the Mopra telescope in the Warrumbungles.
Both radio telescopes operate 24 hours a day and the telescopes are surprisingly quiet.