Mercury Only 15.9° from The Sun

The light dot at the center of the photo is Mercury (m=-0.9) heading for a 18° Eastern elongation on February 19. It was only 3.0° above the western horizon while the Sun was 8.9° below 36 minutes after setting. The shallow angle between the ecliptic and the horizon turns it an unfavorable elongation for observers in the Southern Hemisphere, so that the current 15.9° elongation would correspond only to a 11.9° difference in altitude.

Nikon CoolPix P900 at manual mode using 50x optical magnification.

PhotoScape used to crop the image.