Saturday morning, 16 July 2016, dawned partly cloudy as seasonal Monsoon moisture began arriving from Mexico. As sunset approached, cloud cover increased but the western sky was good enough to photograph the close Venus-Mercury conjunction. Took this full-frame photo of the waxing gibbous Moon at 1922 MST through thin clouds with the D7200 DSLR and 600mm lens:

At sunset there were some interesting cloud formations from a Monsoon storm to the southwest, as seen in this iPhone panorama photo:

1935 MST: sunset. 1940 MST: took this full-frame photo of Venus and Mercury using the 600mm lens to compare their separation (31' 29") to the diameter of the Moon's disk as seen in the Moon photo:

Then took some photos as Venus and Mercury became lower in the darkening twilight sky. The lens focal length was changed as needed to keep distant mountains in the field-of-view with the planets at top of the photos.

1949 MST, FL 150mm


2006 MST, FL 300mm

This last photo was taken at 2010 MST, FL 360mm:

Click or tap on image for larger version

The observatory was not opened this night due to the clouds.

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