STAR GAZER
THE INTERNATIONAL EDITION
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Horkheimer: Greetings, greetings fellow star gazers. Once again I'd like to encourage you to catch planet #1 from the Sun Mercury this week and next because it will be at its best for evening viewing for this entire year. Let me show you.
O.K., we've got our skies set up for this week and next 30 to 45 minutes after sunset facing west northwest and if you have a clear relatively flat horizon you will see a steadily glowing bright pinkish light which is, since Pluto's demotion, now the smallest major planet in the solar system, Mercury. Only 3,000 miles wide, it is only a thousand miles wider than our 2,000 mile wide Moon and a thousand miles smaller than 4,000 mile wide Mars. The next biggest planet is Venus followed by our slightly larger Earth. So if anybody asks you where the smallest major planets reside in our solar system they are the ones closest to the Sun. Mercury being number one, Venus number two, Earth number three and Mars number four.
Now if you start looking at Mercury this week and continue to look at it every night for the next couple of weeks through a small telescope you will notice that it rapidly changes its appearance, getting steadily larger in apparent size but shrinking like the full Moon as it goes from full Moon to last quarter to new. In fact on may 2nd almost 70% of Mercury's disc appeared to be lit up but by Thursday May 8th its disc appears only half lit and it will steadily shrink night after night as it comes closer and closer to Earth. In fact by Sunday night the 18th it will be only 25% lit. Wow!
It's called the pink iron planet because there is more iron in Mercury's core than in our entire Earth. And it's pink only because we always view it through our Earth's dusty atmosphere, which makes it appear pink for the same reason our Sun always looks so colorful when it's close to the horizon. From space Mercury would appear to glow a steady white color and until 1974 no human being had any idea what the surface of Mercury looked like. Then in 1974 our spacecraft Mariner 10 visited it and took the first close up pictures but we were only able to photograph 50% of the planet. What did the rest of it look like?
Well in January of this year our new Messenger spacecraft, the first to visit Mercury in 33 years, flew over previously unseen parts of Mercury and revealed some fabulous and puzzling features including mysterious chains of enormously high cliffs, some two miles high and hundreds of miles long. And although at first glance Mercury resembles Earth's Moon, upon close examination it is much, much different. But the best is yet to come because our Messenger spacecraft will pass close to Mercury again in October of this year and September 2009. And in March 2011 it will go into stationary orbit around the planet and a whole new age of Mercury exploration will begin. So explore Mercury visually for yourself this week and next because the Mercury adventure is just beginning. Keep looking up!
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Horkheimer: Catch Mercury at its best this week and next. 45 minutes after sunset face west northwest and you'll see bright 3,000 mile wide pinkish Mercury which since Pluto's demotion is now the smallest major planet, one thousand miles wider than our Moon and one thousand miles smaller than Mars. Watch it through a small telescope every night and you'll see it change its shape, shrinking like a tiny almost full Moon to only 25% lit. In January our Messenger spacecraft visited Mercury for the first time in 33 years and revealed puzzling features including chains of giant cliffs two miles high and hundreds of miles long. Explore it yourself this week and next. Keep looking up!
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* This week's Sky At A Glance
and Planet Roundup from Sky & Telescope.
This week's Sky At A Glance displays current week only.
Starry Night Deluxe was used to produce this episode
of Star Gazer
![[SmilinJack]](jack1sm.jpg)
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