April 2009: Mercury to become visible in the evening sky this month

Saturday, April 04, 2009

An article on space.com today reminded me of this:

Currently, Mercury is moving slowly pulling away from the sun's vicinity. By April 8, it will be visible about 40 minutes after sunset, very near to the west-northwest horizon. Yet, if your sky is clear and there are no tall obstructions to your view (like trees or buildings) you should have no trouble in seeing it as a very bright "star" shining with just a trace of a yellowish-orange tinge. On that Wednesday evening, Mercury will be shining at magnitude –1.5, which means that it will rank as the brightest object in the early evening sky, surpassing even Sirius (the brightest of all stars).
That's if you're lucky and don't live in the big city, because it will look like this:


With buildings galore there's no way we in the big city will be able to see it. However, it will continue to make its way up into the sky until April 27 or 28, when even after the sky has gone mostly dark it'll still be well above the horizon:

Actually, the article says April 26 but my location is set to Korea where we're almost a day ahead. We're in the future.

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