Spend a few minutes outside this evening and take a look to the west just after sunset. You'll see two stars up there in the sky glow. They're not stars, they're planets; Venus and Mercury. And Mercury will not be around for long.
Mercury takes 88 days to go around the Sun; that's about three months. When it reaches its highest point in the western sky (known as its maximum eastern elongation, basically its furthest point east), it doesn't stay long, and begins its dive right back into the sunset. Meantime, Venus takes a leisurely 225 days to orbit the Sun (though, compared to our 365 days, leisurely might not be an appropriate term, but compared to Mercury...). This trip round, Mercury didn't climb quite as high as Venus (it actually reached its peak on the 8th of April).
It's their proximity to one another in the evening sky that probably piqued the interests of astrologers of old; surely, they must have something going on (goddess of beauty seeing the heavenly messenger? Isn't that like having a fling with your postman?). The truth is that they are tens of millions of miles apart, with Venus still climbing to its maximum eastern elongation, which is months away (more next week).
In early July, Mercury will repeat a climb into the west, a good time for it to be caught for sure. If you're a morning person (I am, with the right amount of coffee), you can catch Mercury in early to mid May doing the same thing in the morning sky. Meantime, enjoy catching these two hotties (well, because they are pretty darned hot) as they hang out together in the sunset.
(This post written on a laptop running Xubuntu. Star chart edited from KStars, Solar System chart co-opted from "The Solar System Live" at Fourmilab.ch)
Good stuff!
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