Bruce McClure
Bruce McClure has served as lead writer for EarthSky s popular Tonight pages since 2004. He s a sundial aficionado, whose love for the heavens has taken him to Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and sailing in the North Atlantic, where he earned his celestial navigation certificate through the School of Ocean Sailing and Navigation. He also writes and hosts public astronomy programs and planetarium programs in and around his home in upstate New York.
Want to nab Mercury, the innermost planet of the solar system, sometimes called the most
elusive planet? Now’s the time to catch this world, as Mercury, an inferior planet, swings to its greatest elongation east of the setting sun on May 17, 2021 (evening of May 16 for the Americas). Look for this world in the western sky, where it’s popping out shortly after sunset above the planet Venus. As evening dusk ebbs into night, Venus blazes near the western horizon, and fainter Mercury is above it, at its maximum angular separation of 22 degrees from the sun on our sky’s dome.