Articles for tag: Mercury, PlanetaryScience, PlanetMercury, planets, SolarSystem

Mercury: The Planet Named After a Speedy Roman God

September 4, 2025

It’s easy to overlook Mercury, the tiny world that skims so close to the Sun it almost disappears in the glare. Yet behind that glare is a planet that keeps springing surprises: ice where it shouldn’t exist, a magnetic field that behaves oddly, and a surface scarred by eruptions long after it should’ve gone quiet. ...

Image title: Moon-Mercury-Pleiades ConjunctionAuthor: Giulio ColomboCountry: Italy This photograph shows the young lunar crescent, some of the nine brightest stars of the Pleiades (with one behind a cloud) on the right, and the planet Mercury, looking slightly red, in the middle of the image. This picture is rather suggestive of the idea that the Pleiades might possibly consist of seven stars. However, the viewer is misled by the clouds; five of the stars form a tiny chariot, one is next to the handle, and three are at the other end of the quadrilateral. Eight stars would be clearly visible if there were no clouds. This configuration of the young Moon next to the Pleiades is visible only in the northern hemisphere spring. Thus it was used by the ancient Babylonians to determine the second month of their year and to judge whether or not an intercalary month was necessary. At least as early as the second millennium before the common era, the Babylonians used several asterisms for each month, with another one of them reappearing every five days after invisibility during daylight. To determine the necessity of intercalation in order to synchronise the solar and the lunar year, the Babylonians used several asterisms, not only the Pleiades. For instance, they also made use of the bright stars Arcturus and Sirius, and they observed a configuration with the Moon as well as heliacal phenomena. The modern Jewish and modern Islamic traditions still make use of some of the Babylonian astronomical rules. However, given that the constellations have shifted as a result of precession, and the fact that nowadays we also have computational means to calculate our calendars, this configuration of the small crescent Moon and the Pleiades is less useful, though it remains exceptionally beautiful. Thus the ancient Babylonian and middle Babylonian tradition survives only rudimentarily. Furthermore, it is unlikely that it is depicted in the Nebra Disc from Bronze Age Europe, as has long been claimed. This image was taken on Elba Island, Italy, in May 2022. Also see image in Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7425575

Have You Seen This? The Moon ‘Kisses’ Mercury and Mars in June’s Cosmic Show

June 12, 2025

Suhail Ahmed

The night sky of June is expected to show a pair of amazing conjunctions one with the elusive Mercury and the other with a remarkably near encounter between the Moon and Mars. These events serve as a reminder of the clockwork accuracy of our solar system and an opportunity to see planetary motions that even ...

Mercury: The Planet Named After a Speedy Roman God

Have You Seen This? The Moon ‘Kisses’ Mercury and Mars in June’s Cosmic Show

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