Mercury was destroyed!! I kid you not...

reply to post by Ghost375

If Mercury was suddenly destroyed, every single channel would carry the story. We would be bombarded with scientists, astronomers, NASA, etc...

*facepalm*

reply to post by seentoomuch


actually...this one was posted first...if you look at the post date and time...this one was before the other thread.

reply to post by lkpuede


Yeah, but the pic posted on pg. 3 Of this thread shows Mercury high in the sky w/ Venus and Jupiter. Mercury could only be in that position during daylight hours. So, yes, I did seriously ask that question. I don't doubt you can see Mercury at sunrise and sunset.. When the Sun is at a low angle at either dusk or dawn it's quite pragmatic for viewing something orbiting close to the sun. Soon after, the sky goes blue due to the angle of the daytime sun and Mercury is unseen by the naked eye.

reply to post by ticklemytweeder


That picture on page 3 was from May. Mercury was further from the Sun (from our viewpoint) in May, and was visible about an hour before sunrise.

How does this post go this long without being dumped into Hoax? Just wondering...

Mercury blew up and I missed it?

Gtfo.

Did a huge alien mothership suck it up? Cmon now, killing me.

Originally posted by Endure
How does this post go this long without being dumped into Hoax? Just wondering...

edit on 20-8-2011 by Endure because: (no reason given)

My thoughts exactly.... Must be generating hits

Originally posted by ticklemytweeder
reply to post by lkpuede

 

Yeah, but the pic posted on pg. 3 Of this thread shows Mercury high in the sky w/ Venus and Jupiter. Mercury could only be in that position during daylight hours. So, yes, I did seriously ask that question. I don't doubt you can see Mercury at sunrise and sunset.. When the Sun is at a low angle at either dusk or dawn it's quite pragmatic for viewing something orbiting close to the sun. Soon after, the sky goes blue due to the angle of the daytime sun and Mercury is unseen by the naked eye.

When you said "...the pic ... shows Mercury high in the sky..." you made a common assumption that the photograph's field-of-view was comparable to what we see with our naked eye. It's not.

Link to the photo

Were this photo taken with a standard point & shoot with no magnification, the planetary grouping would be a small feature in the middle of a much larger scene (if it showed-up at all, because the exposure with such a camera is usually too short to see planets or stars). This photographer may have used a telephoto lense and definitely used an exposure longer than 1-second because several stars are visible He also cropped the resulting image for good artistic composition.

Using Stellarium, I found that the angular separation between Venus & Mars at that time (May 13, 2011) was ~5 degrees. Using this as a ruler, we can see that the field-of-view is about 10 degrees wide and 15 degrees tall. Mercury, in the image, is roughly 13 degrees above the horizon. I was able to confirm that the photo was taken at around 6:30 local time which for its southern latitude was slightly more than an hour before sunrise. Note that the long exposure also makes the sky appear brighter than it looked to the eye. He probably didn't have much more than "the first rosey fingers of dawn."

Using JPL's Solar System Simulator, I made a map of the planetary positions at that time:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/60d09f275fcc.jpg[/atsimg]
Jupiter is about a foot above your monitor, in line with the other planets.

As you can see, the angle between the Sun and Mercury as seen from Earth is 20-25 degrees. The Earth rotates 15 degrees per hour. Depending on your latitude (and the mid-southern hemisphere was optimum for this conjunction) this was ample separation to see that planet well before dawn.

For the record, that crop circle is supposedly telling of an event to come that will destroy mercury, it hasn't already happened. Some think that the Sun is expanding or some crap and it will suck Mercury into it ( i think thats the theory ) but who knows lol.