Another conjunction

I had set my alarm for 6.15am this morning. By 6.30am, I was already out of the house, driving to the nearby market where I could see - and wanted to see - a wide open sky. My only hope was that the sky would be clear and without clouds. I was lucky: the sky was clear and high above me was the waning moon.

But it wasn't the moon that I wanted to see. Rather, it would be two pinpricks of light in the east which would be bright enough to pick out. It took me several seconds to get my bearings right and to have my eyes accustomed to the dark sky. But eventually, I saw them hovering ahead of me, due east.

Yes, those would be the conjunction of two planets: the dimmer Mercury and the brighter Jupiter. Only the second time that I had managed to catch a sight of Mercury at dawn or dusk but this time, it was easy because of the nearby Jupiter in the sky. Not that Jupiter is actually close to Mercury. Far, far from it. But because their apparent positions in the sky were so close together, a conjunction of the planets, it was easy to pick the smaller planet out.

So there they were: Mercury and Jupiter. The even dimmer Saturn was also lurking nearby but my camera simply could not detect it at all. Well, I shall have to be contented with what I saw. After the great Jupiter-Saturn conjunction last 21 December, being able to observe this lesser-publicised Mercury-Jupiter conjunction coming just 2½ months later was definitely a big bonus.

An update: The above picture was taken at 6.45am. By the time I arrived home, I could no longer see the planets or even the moon. Thick clouds had rolled in....

Another update: I have to utter an oops here because I had cropped the above image too much and had taken out Saturn. Below is another image where I've now included all three planets within the frame.