This week the inner-most planet Mercury appears farthest from the Sun as seen from Earth when it reaches Greatest Eastern Elongation on February 24th.
(Shown about 45 minutes after sunset for mid-northern latitudes.)
Scheduled air date: 2006 Feb 20-26
This week the inner-most planet Mercury appears farthest from the Sun as seen
from Earth when it reaches Greatest Eastern Elongation on February 24th.
(Shown about 45 minutes after sunset for mid-northern latitudes.)
Early next week New Moon occurs at perigee—the Moon's closest point to
the Earth—on February 27th.
An alignment of the Earth, Moon and Sun—called a syzygy—occurs at every
New and Full Moon. When this coincides with the Moon's perigee, the result is
unusually extreme tides on Earth.
(The relative apparent sizes of the Moon at its nearest and farthest from Earth
are shown.)
If you wish to view illustrations for other episodes, please see our Star Gazer Illustrated directory.
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Illustrations on this page were created using
TheSky6 Astronomy
Software, an advanced desktop planetarium program designed for Windows. Copyright © 1999-2006 by Software Bisque, Inc. |