Mercury and the Moon

I’ll be doing a live video chat today at 3:00 p.m. Mountain Time. I’ll have a post up around 2:00 with everything you need to participate.

For those of you who don’t have mountains blocking your western horizon, face west shortly after sunset on May 6. The very thin (only two days old!) crescent Moon will lie very near the planet Mercury, which will be shining at a magnitude of about -0.9. Sky and Telescope online has a nice map and more info.

It’s not terribly hard to get good pictures of such an event, so give it a try. They might turn out to be very pretty.

Also, the usually not-so-great but sometimes excellent Eta Aquarids meteor shower peaks around now, too. See SpaceWeather for details.

May 4th, 2008 11:57 AM by Phil Plait in Astronomy, Cool stuff | 4 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

4 Responses to “Mercury and the Moon”

Mark Martin Says:
May 4th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
But since Mercury is so very similar to the Moon in appearance, how will I tell them apart when they’re so close together?
Ken B Says:
May 4th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Speaking of “only 2 days old”:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080411.html

This is the moon only 15-1/2 hours old.
Jewel Says:
May 4th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Hmmm…Perhaps my camera and I will try to find an unobstructed view. Thanks for the info!
Lab Lemming Says:
May 4th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Dear Bad Astronomer,
Mercury looks better in the morning.

What happened to Bad Astronomy???

If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.

Death from the Skies!

Order a copy of Death from the Skies! from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Borders.

"If things worked the way I wanted them to, any reporter about to do another 'sensational' story on deadly meteors would consult this volume, and bang! common sense would find its way into the news. How strange would that world be?"
-- Adam Savage, Mythbusters

"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising

Blogs / Bad Astronomy