{"id":344,"date":"2006-02-24T18:13:46","date_gmt":"2006-02-25T02:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/?p=344"},"modified":"2006-02-24T18:24:50","modified_gmt":"2006-02-25T02:24:50","slug":"planet-mercury-in-the-twilight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/2006\/02\/24\/planet-mercury-in-the-twilight\/","title":{"rendered":"Planet Mercury in the Twilight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-images\/0602\/mercury.jpg\" class=\"right\" \/>If you step out this evening or or tomorrow evening, you might catch a glimpse of the seldom-seen  planet &#8211; Mercury. Known as the <a href=\"http:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/headlines\/y2006\/21feb_mercury.htm\">Incredible Shrinking Planet<\/a>, Mercury is about to slip back out of sight as it disappears behind the Sun until it emerges later this year.<\/p>\n<p><em>Right: Mercury over the Rockies as seen from Denver &#8211; Credit: Jeffrey Beall<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, a little known NASA mission &#8211; MESSENGER &#8211; got a boost from it&#8217;s thrusters to place it on trajectory for another gravity-assisted sling around planet Venus toward it&#8217;s ultimate goal of orbiting the closest planet to the sun.<\/p>\n<p><strong>New Scientist<\/strong> has some information about NASA&#8217;s MESSENGER mission:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientistspace.com\/article.ns?id=dn8771&#038;feedId=space_rss20\">Messenger probe nudged towards Venus flyby<\/a><\/p>\n<p>NASA&#8217;s first mission to Mercury in more than 30 years completed its final trajectory correction manoeuvre on Wednesday before a flyby of Venus in October 2006.<\/p>\n<p>Messenger \u00e2\u20ac\u201c short for Mercury, Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is on a 7.9 billion kilometre path to becoming the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Note: words in the New Scientist article are spelled correctly &#8211; at least in the UK where the magazine is based.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you step out this evening or or tomorrow evening, you might catch a glimpse of the seldom-seen planet &#8211; Mercury. Known as the Incredible Shrinking&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-rocket-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capnbob.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}