The faster moving Mercury is currently overtaking the slower moving Earth as our two planets moving around the central Sun at the focus of the time lapse-

https://sol24.net/data/html/SOHO/C3/96H/VIDEO/

There are many things to remark upon and anyone can do it although it is all new and made possible by the satellite.

I am glad that it will eventually make it into wider circulation, regardless of its origins in this newsgroup and the effort that went into streamlining the references and observations to make it a simple perceptive interpretation.

Smaller targets are harder to hit.

On Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 10:15:04 AM UTC-8, kellehe...@gmail.com wrote:
> The faster moving Mercury is currently overtaking the slower moving Earth as our two planets moving around the central Sun at the focus of the time lapse-
>
> https://sol24.net/data/html/SOHO/C3/96H/VIDEO/
>
> There are many things to remark upon and anyone can do it although it is all new and made possible by the satellite.
>
> I am glad that it will eventually make it into wider circulation, regardless of its origins in this newsgroup and the effort that went into streamlining the references and observations to make it a simple perceptive interpretation.

Why is Earth slower moving?
Bigger than mercury!

On an early dawn walk, any observer will see Venus shining brightly to the right of the Sun as a number of weeks ago, it would be seen as a twilight appearance to the left of the Sun. Mercury now is currently transitioning to the dawn appearance and the right of the Sun presently, although more elusive than Venus in its smaller circuit of the Sun-

https://sol24.net/data/html/SOHO/C3/96H/VIDEO/

No doubt there will be a lot of hype about virtual reality (metaverse) and no doubt some aspects of that endeavour will be worthwhile and productive, however, much like people like to visit the cinema or Disneyland without living there, they can always keep genuine observations with them like the sight of Venus today before returning to their daily business.

https://www.theplanetstoday.com/

The flighty individual will sell the individual a product yet nothing is required of the genuine observer and reader only their time and a small effort to get themselves accustomed to the proper use of technology to make their existence more intimate and abundant from the experience.

It may be that even those presently engaged in magnification, photography and celestial sphere observing will see even their hobby lost rather than work towards expanding the exercise to include the observational context of solar system structure, cause and effect, larger celestial structures and so on.

On Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 5:56:29 PM UTC-7, StarDust wrote:

> Why is Earth slower moving?
> Bigger than mercury!

No, that has nothing to do with it.

The orbital period of a planet is determined solely by the semi-major axis
of its orbit. As Kepler wrote (in book 5 of _Harmonices Mundi_):

Sed res est certissima exactissimaque, quod proportio que est inter binorum
quorumcunque Planetarum tempora periodica, sit pracise sesquialtera
proportionis mediarum distantiarum, id est Orbitum ipsorum; attento
tamen hoc, quod medium arithmeticum inter utramque diametrum elliptica
Orbita sit paulo minus longiore diametro.

But this thing is most certainly most exact, that the proportion
which is between the temporal periods of any two planets is precisely
the sesququadrate proportion between their distances, that is, their
orbits, giving attention to this, that the arithmetic mean between the
two diameters of an elliptic orbit is less than the length of its diameter.

I could also mention the possibly apocryphal story of Galileo
dropping a small and a large cannonball from the Leaning Tower of
Pisa, but there are those in this group who would consider objectionable
the suggestion that gravity has any connection with the orbits of the
planets.

John Savard

Mercury is now moving to a dawn appearance to the right of the stationary/central Sun-

https://sol24.net/data/html/SOHO/C3/96H/VIDEO/

As it shows more of its bright hemisphere the further from the Sun from our perspective, its phase brightens as it exits the range of the satellite camera. When it reappears moving in direct motion behind the Sun, it will show its light hemisphere, so will be fully dazzling as a spectacle in a number of months.