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Fleet-footed Mercury struts its stuff during the first half of the month (and I bet he never used steroids.) Never far from the sun (kind of like a mamma's boy who never moves out), the planet nearest ol' Sol manages to get out from beneath all that glare, giving us our best look at it in 2005.
It reaches its greatest elongation east on the 12th, when it manages to get 18.3 degrees away from the sun in the evening sky. This is still rather low in the west, so you will need a clear view of the horizon to catch this swift little bit of light. It sets about an hour and a half after sunset, shining at a challenging magnitude -0.2 in the gloaming (I've always wanted to use that word ... and now I just have), challenging because it is in the gloaming (and I've used it again!) rather than the dark of night. It was actually brighter at the beginning of the month, but because of its changing orientation to the sun, it goes from nearly full to less than half-illuminated. It loses altitude rapidly after the 12th, dropping from the sky like a brick. Saturn, meanwhile, doesn't strut its stuff so much as hang about, daring you to not see it. It is high in the southern sky at dusk (I resisted using "gloaming" a third time), in the company of Castor and Pollux, in Gemini. Gemini, of course, is one of those recognizable zodiacal constellations; a part of the line-up of heavy hitters that drift across winter and early spring skies, the heavy hitters being Gemini, Taurus, Orion, and Leo. Only Orion does not belong to the zodiac (ah ... location, location, location). And, as you might expect of such a prominent group of stars in the zodiac, Gemini is a mover and shaker in mythology. According to Pliny, a 1st century "Renaissance Man" whose interests were wide-ranging and eclectic, Gemini was a comforting sight to sailors so long as both stars were visible. But if only one was visible, "they drown those ships on which they light, and threaten shipwreck, yea, and they set them on fire..." Regardless of the ill nature of seeing only one of the twins, sailors prayed to them for protection from storms at sea. Of this regard for the twins, Pliny wrote: "Men assigne this mightie power to Castor and Pollux, and invocate them at sea, no lesse than gods." Go To Page: 1 2
The copyright of the article Mercury, Saturn, Gemini, etc. in Amateur Astronomy is owned by Gregg Pasterick. Permission to republish Mercury, Saturn, Gemini, etc. in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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