The conjunction of Venus and Mercury took place this month of May 2020 at 9:44 local time, Venus passing through the north of Mercury at only 0.53º. The orientation and altitude made it very difficult to capture that moment from my observatory, but the evening of that same day offered possibilities of capturing an image of the pair of inner planets.
At 21:40 local time Venus and Mercury, with their rapid displacement over the sky, were already separated by a little more than one degree, and with a relative position completely different from that of the morning when the conjunction took place. But they were located in the sky following the sun to the northwest, and with this orientation I was able to catch them together.
Venus with magnitude -4.2 and Mercury with -0.6 stand out over the reddish colors of the sunset before disappearing behind the low clouds.
Venus is in a crescent phase at 6%, although in the photo the phase seems much more advanced because of the saturation. Mercury is at 72% illuminated, and because of its small size its phase cannot be distinguished on the photo.
The photo was taken with the APO TSED70Q refractor and a Canon 60Da camera at ISO 640 and 5 seconds of exposure, guided by a Skywatcher EQ6 mount.
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