For this week's APOD, I chose the picture called Mercury and Jupiter At Sunset. It is a picture of a beautiful, serene landscape occurring towards the end of a warm evening sunset. Up above the land, both Mercury and Jupiter are seen shining brightly in the Earth's sky. The photo was taken earlier this week from the island of Froson in Sweden, as the scene looks across Lake Storsjon, toward distant mountains and Hallen village.
This is a good viewing month for Mercury, as it is straying away from the Sun in the Earth's sky. As spring draws near in the northern hemisphere, the ecliptic plane is going to make a steep angle with the western horizon, making it easier to be viewed. On the other hand, Jupiter is going to continue getting lower each night after sunset. Even in this image, we see that Mercury is quite a ways above Jupiter in the orange-hue sunset. Since Mercury is our solar system's inner-most planet now, even better pictures of the planet are able to be taken with the Messenger Spacecraft, which is currently orbiting the planet. The Messenger Spacecraft went into orbit around Mercury on about March 17, 2011, after being through more than a dozen laps through the solar system for NASA. This durable spacecraft will carry seven science instruments fortified against the blistering conditions by the Sun, and will become the first spacecraft to go into orbit around this planet.
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