Monday 14th to Sunday 20th August 2023
Mercury and Venus are "inferior planets". Now that sounds like I'm being a bit nasty, but in astronomical terms it's nothing derogatory at all. It simply means that those planets orbit around the Sun inside our own orbit or in other words, they are closer to the Sun than us and we are classed as the "superior planet".
To a Martian, Mars would be the superior planet and the Earth would be classed as another inferior planet!
At the beginning of next week, Venus will have just passed an "inferior conjunction" with the Sun. An astronomical conjunction occurs when two objects appear close together, but of course this is only from the observer's perspective which is two dimensional as you have no depth perception when looking at something in the distance - in reality the objects will still be far away from each other when you think three dimensionally.
An inferior conjunction takes place when the inferior planet is in a straight line directly between the superior planet and the Sun.
As they orbit around the Sun, inferior planets also show different phases, just like our own Moon. If you were to try observing Venus at its inferior conjunction, you would see a thin phase of 0.1%, like a very, very thin crescent, but please don't be tempted to try it as you would be looking directly towards the Sun and this would cause instant and permanent blindness. The experiment would need very specialised equipment and a camera rather than an eyepiece!
Conjunction diagram courtesy of EarthSky.org
Copyright Adrian Dening and Radio Ninesprings 2023
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