This week, Mercury peeks out from hiding by the Sun for its evening/eastern elongation - the furthest it will appear in the sky away from the Sun after sunset. This makes it the easiest time to see Mercury in the evening sky. It will still be low on the horizon for most people. I got my first sighting of Mercury in a good while last night. 15 minutes after sunset it was barely above the trees. If you've got a decently clear horizon, you've got a chance of seeing it too. This will not be the only or best opportunity to see Mercury this year; July 3 has a better evening elongation.
Mercury is one of the brightest objects in the sky and visible without a telescope. Currently, its apparent size is well more than half of Mars's apparent diameter right now. So while it's still very small in a telescope, its phase can be seen easily. The conventional wisdom says you can see no features on Mercury with a telescope. But where's the fun in that? Old time visual astronomers attempted several maps of Mercury with their large professional grade telescopes, with questionable results.
So my question for the group is: has anybody been able to spot albedo features or differences on Mercury before? I have seen CN members report albedo features with Ganymede, so it seems within reach. On the other hand, the maps made by past astronomers had almost no correspondence to the photos taken by space probes...
.
Weather was calm and almost blue skies, although it got cloudy near the horizon. I couldn't see Mercury with the naked eye, and it was tough to find but then I spotted it in my finder scope. I saw its "half moon" disc shape very clearly in my 8" dob. It was a bit hazy and lots of "fire" around it, but that's how it is when observing near the horizing with the sun just barely set. I got some good views in and could see it in its small and grey glory. I'm just happy to finally have caught such an elusive object with my eyes, and even on its highest elongation. 
