If you haven’t ticked Mercury off your planet bucket list yet, tonight is the night! Use bright red-coloured Mars as your guide and you’ll spot the closest planet to the Sun in no time at all. After sunset on 13th November, Mercury is just to the left of Mars. There’s another red object above and that’s the red super giant star, Antares. It marks the heart of the constellation of Scorpius. The scorpion is diving head first into the horizon!
If you keep watching in evenings over the next week, you’ll notice that Mercury appears to get lower on the horizon while Mars appears to move up to be at the same height as Antares. On the 21st, the slim crescent Moon joins in the fun with an appearance above Antares.
Use the above image as a guide. Astronomical images provided by SkySafari, a Simulation Curriculum Company, All rights reserved www.simulationcurriculum.com.
When and where to look:
7:15pm, 13th and 21st November low above the western horizon.
Something Interesting
In our solar system, Mercury is the smallest and closest planet to the Sun. A year on Mercury is only 88 days.
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) currently have a joint mission to Mercury to study the planet more closely than ever before. The name of the spacecraft is BepiColombo. It made its first flyby of Mercury in October 2021 before the craft goes into orbit around Mercury in December 2025.
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There’s always something interesting happening in the night sky and country WA is the best place to catch all the action