On Mar 31, 9:18*pm, Sam Wormley wrote:
On 3/31/10 10:56 PM, tonysin wrote:



On Mar 31, 3:53 pm, Sam *wrote:
Venus (And Mercury ) in Western Sky this week...

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2...nets.htm?list1....

I simply don't understand how anybody ever noticed Mercury before
photography was invented.

I live on the west coast of Oregon, less than a mile from the ocean,
so looking west is looking into some of the cleanest air on the planet
--- it has to be MUCH cleaner than the atmosphere back when everybody
used wood fires for cooking and heating. *I knew exactly where to look
--- all the diagrams on the net, plus my Stellarium program, show it
at about 4 o'clock from Venus, just a couple degrees away. *The sky in
the west was cloudless, for a change --- Venus was brilliant.I had 8-
power binoculars. *And I still couldn't find Mercury.

How in the world could the ancient Greeks have ever noticed it?

* *It will get better over the next week!
* *Worth the effort!

Stellarium shows it getting just a little farther from the sun in the
next few days, but with a corresponding loss of brightness.

Probably moot for me, because clouds and rain are forecast for my area
for the rest of the week. Tonight was probably my only chance.