1/15/2024 0 Comments Retrograde motion of planets![]() ![]() Still, because of the planet’s location between us and the sun, Mercury’s apparent retrograde motion is only visible to the human eye around sunrise and sunset. Mars’ apparent retrograde is easier to see because the Red Planet is right next door, but it takes about two Earth years to go around the sun completely. Since Mercury is closer to the sun and has a shorter orbit, its apparent retrograde happens frequently. In fact, there’s a website dedicated solely to telling you whether Mercury is currently retrograding. Interest in Mercury’s influence on human life has once again picked up in popularity over the past few years, together with enthusiasm about astrology in general. Read More: The Cannibalistic Chaos Within Planetary Systems But its retrograde is purely an optical effect because we're both going around the sun … at different speeds,” says Byrne. “We basically overtake Mercury for a little while, and then it outpaces us again. It takes three to four weeks for Earth to catch up, at which point Mercury goes back into prograde. This means that every three to four months, the planet starts to circle back. Mercury takes only 88 of our 365 days to complete its circumnavigation. On the flip side, when planets that are closer than us to the sun - Venus and Mercury - overtake us and begin to curl back around the sun, they also appear to be moving backward from our perspective. It’s the same phenomenon that occurs when you overtake a slower car while driving: It may appear as if the other car is not moving, or moving backward, but both vehicles are still traveling in the same direction. ![]() When we overtake a planet that is farther from the sun than us, like Mars, it can look like the planet is moving backward against a backdrop of stars. All planets travel around the sun in a counter-clockwise orbit and in most cases, when we look up at the sky at night, they all appear to be traveling in that same direction.īut because not all planets travel at the same speed around the sun - and because they embark on differently sized orbits - sometimes Earth “laps” other planets. Mercury retrograde is called “apparent Mercury retrograde” by astronomers because it’s an optical illusion. Read More: Why Are People So Into Astrology Right Now? But many more discoveries are added to our understanding of the universe every year. Plus, most astrology is based on the classical planets, those we have known about for centuries and can see with the naked eye. “I'd hate to think that the planets were having any kind of effectiveness, and I think we can pretty confidently say that they don't.” “I feel like life is chaotic as it is,” says Paul Byrne, an Earth and planetary sciences expert at Washington University in St. ![]()
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