That astrology also gets the basic observations wrong seems even odder. Astrology is all about giving meaning to line-of-sight observations. SkySafari So how significant is Mercury retrograde?įor your everyday life, it’s not. Mercury and the sun are in Libra right now not Scorpius as astrologers pretend. And, no, Mercury’s gravitational pull has zero effect on us. That’s to say nothing about how celestial line-of-sight illusions could possibly have any impact on humans. What’s the mechanism for that? There isn’t one. The star sign of Scorpius runs from October 23-November 21, but neither the Sun nor Mercury are in the constellation of Scorpius! They’re in Libra!.Mercury isn’t going backwards at all, it just appears to us that it is.Is any of that actually important? None of it is even true, let alone important. A planet going backwards during the reign of the star sign of Scorpio? Not good. It’s an astrological chart that represents the positions of the Sun, Moon and planets. Let’s start by first considering what a horoscope is. What do horoscopes say about Mercury retrograde? In his wake came Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton and modern astronomy was born. Nicolaus Copernicus made sense of Mercury’s retrograde motion-and that of the outer planets, too-back in 1543 with that heliocentric model. So Mercury retrograde is, in fact, the basis for nothing less than the scientific revolution. The other evidence is that both of the inner planets, Mercury and Venus, have phases as viewed from Earth. Why is Mercury retrograde important?Īstronomers and astrologers have long known that planets appear to go backwards, which is why planets acquired their name, which means “wanderers.” However, don’t underestimate its importance, for the sight of a planet appearing to go backwards is observational proof that the geocentric model-that everything in the night sky orbits Earth-is wrong, and that the heliocentric model is correct. Earth overtakes it and-hey presto-Mercury appears to go backwards for a short period. Mercury’s orbit of the Sun is elliptical, and when it comes close to Earth during its “inferior conjunction”-now-it slows down. Here’s an easy way to think about that a car traveling at 80 mph will appear to go backwards when viewed through the window of a passing car going at 90 mph.įor Mercury, it’s a little more complicated. They then appear to be moving backwards for a short time. SkySafari Why does Mercury appear to go backwards?įrom Earth we don’t get to witness complete orbits of planets because we’re on an orbit around the sun ourselves, but it has another effect each planet occasionally appears to go backwards for a few weeks, something called “apparent retrograde motion” by astronomers.Įarth is orbiting the Sun much faster than the outer planets, so occasionally overtakes them. Mercury's apparent retrograde motion from October 31 through November 20, 2019.
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