Starship Asterisk*

Venus and Mercury at Sunset

Explanation: Inner planets Venus and Mercury can never wander far from the Sun in Earth's sky. This week you've probably seen them both gathered near the western horizon just after sunset, a close conjunction of bright celestial beacons in the fading twilight. The pair are framed in this early evening skyview captured on January 13 from the ruins of Szarvasko Castle in northwestern Hungary. Above the silhouette of the landscape's prominent volcanic hill Venus is much the brighter, separated from Mercury by little more than the width of two Full Moons. On Friday, planet Earth's early morning risers will also be treated to a close conjunction, when Saturn meets an old crescent Moon near the southeastern horizon at dawn.

<< Previous APOD

This Day in APOD

Next APOD >>

[/b]

Awesome...to see them so close together...I have only seen Mercury a handful of times, and I needed computer control to find it with my scope, or not find it at all...most of the time it is below the tree line in either direction, even when it is up...So, this is really neat!!

:---[===] *

An online dictionary: mercurial: adjective 1. changeable; volatile; fickle; flighty; erratic

Tamas Ladanyi in the credit is a link to his website. I have however tried to access his biography in the TWAN website but I cannot access it and neither can I for all of the biographies of the other TWAN photographers. The same thing happened with the APOD of January 10 2015 when I thought that there was probably just a temporary problem. I am now wondering if others can or cannot access the biographies in TWAN?

It's not just you, David. There's an error in the page. It's probably an easy fix but no one is aware of it. You should email them about it.

geckzilla wrote:It's not just you, David. There's an error in the page. It's probably an easy fix but no one is aware of it. You should email them about it.

Thanks geckzilla for your very quick response . I now know I'm not the only one that has the problem.