Mercury and Venus!

Mercury and Venus are the two "inner" planets, meaning they are closer to the Sun than we are.  Venus is never a problem to find when it is visible to us, which is not all the time.  Sometimes it is too close to the sun for us to see it because of the Sun's brightness.  Venus has been putting on a spectacular show for the last couple of months, blazing high in the sky about an hour after sunset.  But it is getting closer to the Sun, as we see it and will soon be out of our view.  So I decided to look at it with a telescope , both while the Sun was still up, which is possible, and then after the Sun had set.  I won't go into the mechanics of it all but tonight Venus was an incredibly thin and delicate crescent in the telescope.  Such a beautiful sight.  After seeing that, I knew that Mercury was also nearby and I found it in binoculars, so decided to take a photograph of them both.  Here is is.  And Mercury is down between some tree branches on the lower left, just a tiny speck.  And here is a photograph I tried to take with my SONY camera while looking through the eyepiece.  Not very successful but I got something.  The actual visual crescent was only about 1/3 the thickness of how it looks in the photograph.  But at least I got something.  Please click on the first photograph to see it larger.