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Ephemeris: 03/24/2025 – Mercury crosses over to the morning side

March 24, 2025

This is Ephemeris for Monday, March 24th. Today the Sun will be up for 12 hours and 22 minutes, setting at 8:00, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:36. The Moon, 2 days past last quarter, will rise at 5:58 tomorrow morning.

Today, Mercury is at inferior conjunction with the Sun, two days after Venus. Mercury of course, this is in the middle of its retrograde motion period, moving westward against the stars, and for astrologers Mercury in retrograde is a big deal. I consider astrology is to astronomy as tea-leaf reading is to botany, so I dismiss it. Every once in a while Mercury, when it passes inferior conjunction, crosses in front of the face of the Sun for us. These are called transits, and are fairly rare. The last time was in November 2019 and the next time will be in November 2032 which is seven years from now. Mercury will move into the morning sky, where its appearance will not be favorable for us in the Northern Hemisphere.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT – 4 hours). Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

Here we have the retrograde loops of both Mercury and Venus. The labeled positions of the planets and Sun are for today, March 24, 2025. Venus was inferior conjunction 2 days ago. The dates shown are for the first position the year, month, and day. The month is a Roman numeral, so it started on February 27th and extend to April 16th. The horizontal grid marks are 5° apart. The Sun moves about about 1° a day towards the left along the orange line which represents the ecliptic or the Sun’s path. Saturn also is moving very slowly eastward nearly parallel to the ecliptic. This is all taking place against the stars of western Pisces. The five star loop on the right is an asterism called the Circlet which represents a loop of the rope around the tail of the western fish. Created using Stellarium.

Retrograde loops are caused by looking at a moving planet from another moving planet, the Earth.

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