We saw Mercury!



TL;DR: We saw Mercury while on vacation!


Wednesday night, we were walking back from dinner, and saw this sight in the western sky. (Picture courtesy GD1):



"What is that bright speck at the upper limb of the moon?", I wondered.

I vaguely recalled that there was an annular eclipse around now. I was tired from a full day, so my brain said: "Baily's Beads"!

This jolted me into action. I yelled "It's an eclipse!" and tore off down the hallway to fetch my 50x zoom camera from the hotel room. Witnesses say I just missed bowling over some alarmed tourists, and numerous grandchildren raced after me. One witness (SIL1) said he'd never seen me move so fast..

A jink and a jag, and I got to our room's balcony, camera in hand, just in time for everything to go behind the clouds. My picture:



We're home now, and I've been curating some of our images. I zoomed in on the highlight of GD1's picture:


and later SIL2 offered up his, which I zoomed in closer:



What IS that little dot above the Moon?

10-15 minutes of research reveal that it is... MERCURY! Oh, oh, I am overcome. Seeing Mercury is rare. And takes planning.

Go to https://stellarium-web.org/, put in Cancun, Mexico as your location. Date of February 18, 2026, time of 19:23 Cancun local, or whatever your equivalent local time is, and you can confirm:




that the Moon was just about to occult Mercury.

P.S. Eventually I realized Bailey's Beads are not going to happen with a lunar eclipse.

P.P.S. Quoting universetoday.com
Part of what makes this rare event [the occultation] ideal is how relatively far it occurs from the Sun. Mercury reaches greatest eastern elongation 18 degrees from the Sun on February 19th, just 18 hours after the occultation. The Moon is 2.5% illuminated at the time of the event, and Mercury presents a -0.5 magnitude, 7” in diameter, 53% illuminated disk.

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