Venus, Jupiter, Mercury

figure from Scientific American blogs

Tonight sees three planets close together in the western sky: Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury. Our new binoculars got their first outing, and we saw the triple very clearly.  Beautiful.

This also gives us an indication of how good these binoculars are for stargazing: with my small birdwatching 8x42 pair, I could see Venus clearly, Jupiter just, and Mercury not at all. With these new 15x70s I could see all three planets clearly.

just visible in the slightly cloudy western sky; Sun 26 May 2013, 21:51 BST