If you watch the visible planets night after night, they will mostly appear to shift eastward. The ancient Greeks dubbed these planetes, or wanderers we now call them planets. What you see in the night sky are stars forming patterns (the constellations) that do not change from night to night, along with a handful of bright starlike lights that usually twinkle less than their neighbors and shift position compared to the static stars around them. Instead, when you look up at the sky, you see it from Earth’s vantage point inside it, which makes puzzling out its motions a bit like trying to work out the motion of other things on a merry-go-round while you’re riding on it - but even more so because, unlike horses mounted fixedly on a carousel, planets move independently and at varying speeds. You don’t see the solar system neatly laid out as if you were looking down at it from a few billion miles above the sun’s north pole. But that’s not what you see when you go outside on a dark, clear night away from city lights and look up at the starry sky. When you learn about planets and their orbits from books and websites, they’re often accompanied by diagrams or animated graphics of planets in neat, elliptical orbits. Let’s look at what causes this phenomenon and explore the effects of planets in retrograde. As Astronomy magazine explains, it’s how Mercury appears to move counter to its usual orbit across the night sky as seen from Earth. The periodic retrograde motion of Mercury is not an actual physical motion of the planet - it’s only an optical effect. But, oddly enough, the one thing Mercury’s planetary retrograde has absolutely no effect on whatsoever is Mercury itself. They may also suggest it’s a good time to take stock of your personal relationships and brace for bad luck. What happens when Mercury is in retrograde? Lifestyle websites might warn you to expect dropped phone calls, airport delays and other strange happenings.
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