Project mercury update

In my previous blog I made mention of my dawn raid on planet Mercury. I said how it had failed this time, but it turns out I was wrong.

I did see it; in the sense that I spent some time staring at the right portion of the sky, and also observing it through a pair of high quality Leitz 7x42 night-glasses.. Therefore I can say with certainty that photons steaming from the sun had bounced off its ancient, cast- iron surface and were for a number of seconds directly impinging on my retinae. Obviously it was a trifle unfortunate that my eyes were no longer sharp enough to register anything at the time.  Indeed, I only know of my "siting" now because I have had a chance to study and magnify the images I captured on the ground.. Idly scanning the pictures on higher magnification, I found one little star, very faintly pink, hovering just below the crescent moon.

A brief scan of the net confirmed it was the genuine article, in precisely the correct spot according to the star charts for this morning.

It is a bit of a shame that Mercury can no longer be classified as a "naked eye object" in my case , but that is the way of things. My eyes have never been that good: I had to be fitted with a pair of specs to correct my myopia at the age of ten. But the spectacles did at least restore my vision to "normal", or average. Until 2 years ago, that is, when I realised that my latest prescription; giving me the best vision possible, was no longer  good enough. It was an unpleasant moment, which I have to say caused a little spasm of consternation to run through me.

Now I've begun to get over myself about my slowly fading vision. There are worse things. And besides, I've always believed that the greatest telescope, offering the greatest images, can be found inside the mind. I can never go to the Moon. No one can ever go inside a black hole, or linger near a supernova. But in my mind I can do all this and more. Sit on a photon say, or wink at a quark. And what I can't see with my naked eye, I'll just magnify till I can.