Last edited Mon Mar 19, 2018, 10:53 AM - Edit history (3)
I just came in from looking at this wondrous spectacle. I had my binoculars with me, but they are not necessary. I could even see Mercury without my glasses.
According to the truly great Planetarium app running on my Palm TX, Mercury's brightness is now at magnitude 0.4 (and it is 0.820 AU from Earth). That's really falling off fast, because when I caught Venus and Mercury from the Braddock Road Metro station on Friday evening, Mercury's brightness was at magnitude 0.0 (and it was 0.872 AU from Earth) at about 8:00 p.m.
I had been looking for Mercury, which I always consider a catch. I first spotted it this year a week ago Friday (the 9th) as I was walking across a parking lot toward a Metrobus stop on New Hampshire Avenue in Hillandale, Maryland. Its brightness then was at magnitude -0.9; Mercury doesn't get much brighter than that. That's the kind of brightness it needs to be seen in such an urban setting. On the 9th, it was 1.09 AU from Earth, so it is moving between us and the Sun. We are losing our view of the sunny side of Mercury and beginning to see the shadowy side of Mercury, so to speak.
Venus's brightness is magnitude -3.9, and it is 1.62 AU from Earth, so we are viewing a full Venus. When you see Venus, you are seeing it as it was 13 minutes and 28 seconds ago.
I just totally love the Planetarium app. I think I told a Metro worker more than she was interested in hearing last Friday evening when she asked me if I was looking at the stars, as I stood too close to the platform edge to get a better view.
My Palm TX is running Palm OS Garnet, version 5.4.9. If you have an old Palm or Sony CLIÉ sitting around gathering dust, charge it up and install Planetarium. It was never ported to the iOS or the Android, and I know of no app as compact that does so much.
Looking at the planets and the Moon lined up as they were tonight, I felt I was being taken back in time 6,000 years. Surely 4,000 BC, humans would have stared at this beautiful sight, wondering just what was that they were looking at. Astronomy was one of first sciences. As it gets more difficult to see the skies from urban settings, I fear we are losing an old and basic human pastime.
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