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Mercury
2nd capture of the night, ASI715 and ZWO850 IR pass. I didn't even attempt the V band with it being so low in the west, maybe I should have. To my surprise, I noticed some darker areas in the gibbous planetary disk in the NIR. Initially I thought the darker shadings surely had to be artifacts from diffraction at this long wavelength, but a WinJupos simulation shows a reasonably good match in several areas. In particular, I do think the dark patch extending out from the terminator right of centre is real. The brighter area north (right) of it is Caloris Planitia, of which I might be inclined to call this a capture of sorts. The seeing was better than I thought.
Visually, the phase was apparent but no surface detail.
Last edited by N1; 19-11-2024 at 09:16 AM.
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