Good evening fellow stargazers!
Here in my little corner of South Carolina, we've had ourselves some serious spring weather the last couple of days. Thankfully, the evening skies were quite clear giving me a wonderfully unobstructed view of the conjunction of our solar system's two innermost planets -- Mercury and Venus -- low in the west about half an hour after sunset.
As you can see the smallest planet, Mercury, is almost invisible in the bright twilight next to Venus, even tough it shines as brilliantly as a 1st-magnitude star. Venus is, of course, the third-brightest celestial body in the night sky, so using it as a point of reference, spotting Mercury was easy.
At conjunction, the two planets appear from our perspective here on Earth to pass within only about one degree (about the length of your little finger at arm's length) apart from one another in the western sky. Mercury, which is about 36 million miles from the sun, takes about 88 Earth days to complete an orbit around the sun; while Venus, which sits at a mean distance of about 67 million miles from the sun, takes 225 days to orbit the star.
Well, until next time, have a good evening and y'all be sure to keep your eyes to the night skies!
Here in my little corner of South Carolina, we've had ourselves some serious spring weather the last couple of days. Thankfully, the evening skies were quite clear giving me a wonderfully unobstructed view of the conjunction of our solar system's two innermost planets -- Mercury and Venus -- low in the west about half an hour after sunset.
As you can see the smallest planet, Mercury, is almost invisible in the bright twilight next to Venus, even tough it shines as brilliantly as a 1st-magnitude star. Venus is, of course, the third-brightest celestial body in the night sky, so using it as a point of reference, spotting Mercury was easy.
At conjunction, the two planets appear from our perspective here on Earth to pass within only about one degree (about the length of your little finger at arm's length) apart from one another in the western sky. Mercury, which is about 36 million miles from the sun, takes about 88 Earth days to complete an orbit around the sun; while Venus, which sits at a mean distance of about 67 million miles from the sun, takes 225 days to orbit the star.
Well, until next time, have a good evening and y'all be sure to keep your eyes to the night skies!
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