| This view of the evening planet scene is looking across the Rappahannock River in the foreground at the bottom toward Fredericksburg, Virginia. We see Venus nearing the Pleiades and Mercury nearing its greatest elongation from the Sun, on this date being a little more than 19° to the east of it. Venus is magnitude -4.06, Mercury is -0.18, and Uranus is +5.84 which is (5.84 + 4.06 = 9.90 ---> 2.512^9.9 = 9,124.2) 9,124 times dimmer than Venus! |