Sunset, Mercury, and a New Moon from Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge

Mar 1

I decided to check out Sunset Porch at Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge after work yesterday to try to view this “Planetary Alignment” that has been hyped on social media this week. I was super skeptical about seeing anything beyond Mars, Jupiter, and Venus… it seemed like Mercury, the Moon, and Saturn would be too low in the sky and too close to the sun when I was doing research on my planning apps. I mean, Mercury always seems to be too close to the sun to observe.

I knew I’d need to have an unobstructed view of the horizon, so I drove about an hour west to gain some advantage with elevation. I’ve had this location saved in Google Maps for years, but still had not checked it out. So here’s a sunset from Sunset Porch.

Sunset timelapse taken from “Sunset Porch” at Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge on February 28, 2025

Before I get into how the planetary viewing went, here’s some other pictures I took while waiting for the planets to be visible…