by Matt Tarlach
Brent Hutto wrote on Shallow-Sky:
The sky finally darkened enough for me to find Mercury down among the pine trees around 9:05PM....
I also enjoyed a good view of Mercury yestereve, June 8 2000, in twilight from my patio in the Central Valley of California. Instrument was a 80mm f11 Vixen refractor, viewing at ~130x (18mm Edscorp ortho + Klee barlow).
I've been following Mercury more nights than not since first spotting it at RTMC on May 26. Boy, that little guy moves! Very easy to track the progress eastward against the background sky....Castor and Pollux have made good landmarks even in the bright twilight. The phase changes quickly, too. From Riverside it was noticeably gibbous; since then it has narrowed almost nightly. Last night it was clearly crescent - I'd compare it to a 5-day Moon.
No sign of surface detail, or the color display Brent mentions (except for expected atmospheric dispersion.)