How Einstein would have enjoyed the recent and successful discoveries of gravitational lenses. These days, astronomers conduct programs studying the constancy of millions of stars to find the VERY few that have had a dark, small, nearer object pass in front of them. Mercury is at its greatest angular distance east of the sun but not enough to make this tiny planet comfortably easy to see. The sun rises due east and sets due west from any vantage point on the globe today. Both objects will be below the Kansas horizon then, but along a band stretching from Central America to the coast of New Guinea, astronomers will train their telescopes on the pair as the moon occults Venus.
Astronomers can be very determined people.
The moon is verging on new phase and is pretty tough to see in the morning sunlight, but some careful astronomers will try this morning. This is the second of two major occultations of bright planets by the moon this month. Astronomers, of course, prize new moon phase since moonlight can make some observations difficult. Those of us who live so far from the ocean may forget that the new moon can produce extreme tides just as well as the full moon. This will be especially true today, since the moon is also at perigee just a few hours after new moon phase.