There Are 3 Times You Can Spot Mercury With The Naked Eye In Indiana During 2023
By Tori Jane|Published January 20, 2023
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Tori Jane
Author
Tori Jane is a storm chaser, writer, photographer, and the village idiot - in that order. When she's not out and about dancing with the meanest storms on planet Earth for funsies she can be found wandering, shooting landscapes, writing, editing photos, and otherwise up to no good. Legend has it that she can also be occasionally spotted typing up short bios in the third person, but those rumors are unsubstantiated.
For those of us who cannot possibly get enough of the night sky, every new year is an exciting prospect. After all, this means that all the year’s celestial events are “reset” in a way and we can look forward to finally seeing them again. For example, if you’re a fan of stargazing in Indiana, you might want to look up not once, not twice, but three times this year to see the planet Mercury at its greatest elongation from the sun. Get ready to wake up early: this spectacle is worth it!
The "greatest elongation" is described in astronomy as "the configuration in which one celestial body reaches its greatest apparent distance from another."
In this case, Mercury will reach its greatest distance from the Sun during its orbit. It's also during this special time that you'll be able to see the little planet shining bright in the early morning sky better than any other times of year.
The first time this happens is at the end of this month, on January 30th.
Each time this occurs, your best bet is to go to a place with an unobstructed eastern sky, look low on the horizon, and find the bright white little dot that doesn't shimmer like stars do.
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Mercury is so much more interesting than just the first rock from the sun, and it's pretty amazing that we can see it from our little place here on planet Earth at all.
After Pluto was ousted from the list of solar system planets (we love you, Pluto, and you'll forever be a planet in our hearts), Mercury stepped in to take the title for itself.
Mercury is not the best place to try and get a sun tan unless one wants to be completely vaporized; the temperatures on the planet range from -279.4 degrees Fahrenheit (-173 Celsius) to 800.6 degrees Fahrenheit (427 Celsius). Talk about a sunburn.
Mercury is the planet with the most craters in the entire solar system, the largest of which could fit all of western Europe in it.
Despite the fact that we cannot physically go to Mercury, even with unmanned rockets (only two spacecraft have ever been sent to study it thanks to numerous difficulties brought on by proximity to the Sun), there is still a small chunk of what is believed to be the planet here on Earth. In 2012, a strange, green meteorite was found for sale at a street market in Morocco.
Upon examining its composition and realizing it matches data we received from one of those two aforementioned spacecraft (known as MESSENGER), astronomers currently believe that it was nicked off of Mercury by an impact of some kind before it eventually found its way to Earth's atmosphere, where it shot to the surface as a meteorite upon getting too close.
It's probably a little lonely to be Mercury, though - it has no moons, though it does enjoy frequent impacts to its surface.
As we mentioned before, the first time you’ll be able to see Mercury at its greatest western elongation is on January 30, and the other two mornings are the mornings of May 29 and September 22, 2023.
One of the best places you can possibly go to check this celestial event out is Tippecanoe State Park, which offers up some of the all-time best dark skies in Indiana you’ll find.
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