Neptune & Mercury April 17th

Mercury is hard to show because it can only be seen before the sun is up.
Neptune is very small and dim and hard to stand out when the sky is not dark.

Since I wanted to show both Mercury and Neptune together I needed to shoot them
when they were at their closest, which was the 17th April from my viewpoint.
Then I can zoom in and crop the frame to make it easier to see Neptune.

Neptune is the blue dot at the tip of the line at bottom left pointing up at Mercury
at top right. I could only see Mercury. I only saw Neptune in the photo.

Shot at 1/3 into the morning twilight. The sun was rising and soon Neptune would disappear.

William Optics 61 360mm
Nikon D750 full frame camera

Because Neptune is so small and dim I had to edit the photo.
I used the RAW format.
To show more blue in Neptune I boosted the blue with colour contrast and colour correction.
To show Neptune I used Levels to darken the sky and Curves to brighten the dots.
I also overlaid two layers to boost the brightness.