Mercury and Venus Conjunction - June 20, 2013

Conjunction of Mercury and Venus

Mercury and Venus Conjunction - June 20, 2013
Mercury and Venus Conjunction – June 20, 2013

Hello sketchers

Here my last observation of Mercury and Venus

Object Name (Mercury and Venus)
Object Type (Planet conjunction)
Location (Val d’Issole)
Date (June 20th 2013)
Media (Watercolour for the landscape and graphite pencil for the planets)

During this very “non cloudy” evening with a perfect transparency, I observed this planet conjunction from my own terrace. I use a 10×50 binocular to find Mercury as early as possible, then with my 102/1000 refractor I begin to sketch this planet that I see with a pale orange light, until masking by the horizon. Some time after, I sketched Venus, with a more blue light. The EP I used was a 40mm to find the planets and then a 10mm SWA to sketch.

What is uncommon here is the apparent diameter of both planets, they looks very similar in size but with very different colours. In fact, Mercury was close to us, nearly between the sun and the earth, and Venus was far further our star.

Michel – http://astro.aquarellia.com

Michel Deconinck

4 thoughts on “Conjunction of Mercury and Venus”

  1. Michel,

    This is a stunning capture in water color with excellent close ups of the two planets.

    Frank 🙂

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