Evening star, morning, star, fleeting star - at last you have a face!

Anyone else see this face on Mercury in the release of the first pictures of the hidden side? Anyone want to know what I saw in the pattern made by the maple syrup on my pancakes this morning ;-)

Seriously - Mercury is visible to all of us in the western sky shortly after Sunset these nights - and here's the text about this new photo from Spaceweather.com this morning. "NASA's Messenger spacecraft took this picture from a range of 17,000 miles on Jan. 14, 2008. At first glance, it seems to show little more than a repetitive expanse of craters. But researchers are excited. One of the craters is the giant Caloris Basin never before seen in its entirety. Formed by the impact of a large asteroid or comet, Caloris is one of the largest and perhaps youngest basins in the Solar System. Close-up photos of the 800-mile-wide crater (still being downloaded from the spacecraft) may reveal new things about the history of Mercury and the physics of catastrophic impacts."

Check out the "Messenger" Web site for all the latest news.

Now - where and when do you find Mercury? I'd start looking about 5 pm tonight - assuming you have a clear southwestern horizon. At that time Mercury will be 10 degrees up and quite bright (-.8) - certainly brighter than any star over in that region. Ten degrees is one fist held at arm's length - without glove ;-) The exact bearing is azimuth 234 degrees. Since South is 180 and West is 270 - well, 234 comes pretty close to defining "southwest." Ok, not quite - southwest would be 225, so we're talking one fist to the right of that. The Sun will have set a tad north of this position at azimuth 242 - hmmm, almost a first to the north.

Sunset is at 4:39 here in Westport. Finding Mercury then becomes an issue of when the sky gets dark enough for the planet to shine through the glow of the Sun. As we roll on eastward, the Sun gets farther below the horizon and the western sky gets darker. But Mercury gets closer to the horizon with each passing minute as well. For example, by 5:30 it's only 5 degrees up and will surely be lost in the afterglow and haze that usually hugs the horizon. You'll also ne pretty cold by then, given the forecast, unless you're cheating, as I do. I sit in my car at the beach and wait for a look. I don't get out until I see it ;-)

Oh - and will you see the face? of course not. Mercury is not only fleeting, but tiny, and even with the biggest telescopes from Earth we see next to nothing on its disc - plus the side with the face is hidden. And anyways, maybe I'm the only one who see its that way ;-)

More serious advice - use binoculars and scan the sky in that general vicinity, assuming its free of clouds, You'll pick it up faster. This isn't your only chance. For the next 10 days Mercury will be a tad higher each day. But by the end of the month it will be a tad lower each day. Kind of fun. That why they call it "fleeting." It puts in these little appearances periodically, teasing us to find it if we can. Then it's back, lost in the glow of the Sun until it starts winking at us again, this time before breakfast. Evening star, morning, star, fleeting star - at last you have a face!