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Mercury

Bright Planetary Conjunctions Liven Up This Week’s Evening Sky

May 22, 2013

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter Planning a barbecue this weekend? You may want to top it off with a look at three bright planets shuttling about the western sky at dusk. Jupiter, Venus and Mercury gather for nearly a week of delightful alignments including three separate [...]

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Mercury Shows Off Its Reds, Whites, and Blues

May 14, 2013

At first glance, the planet Mercury may bear a striking resemblance to our own Moon. True, both are heavily-cratered, airless worlds that hide pockets of ice inside polar shadows… but there the similarities end. In addition to being compositionally different than the Moon, Mercury also has surface features that you won’t find on the lunar [...]

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New Crater Names Approved for Mercury’s South Pole & More

March 27, 2013

Move over, Tolkien & Tryggvadóttir. Yesterday, an announcement was made that the International Astronomical Union (IAU) approved proposed names for nine new craters on the planet Mercury. The names honor deceased writers, artists and musicians following the convention established by the IAU for naming features on the innermost world. The announcement comes as NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft has completed mapping of [...]

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See Mercury at its Greatest Elongation for 2013

March 25, 2013

A fine apparition of the planet Mercury graces the dawn skies this week, leading up to its greatest elongation from the Sun for 2013. It seems that nearly every appearance of the planet Mercury is touted as the “best” these days. Such was the case with the inner-most world’s dusk showing early last month. Truth [...]

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MESSENGER Sees a Smoother Side of Mercury

March 22, 2013

During its two years in orbit around Mercury — as well as several more years performing flybys — the MESSENGER spacecraft has taken over 150,000 images of the innermost planet, giving us a look at its incredibly rugged, Sun-scoured surface like never before. But not all areas on Mercury appear so harsh — it has [...]

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