Isaac Asimov (1920-1992), a legendary writer of science and science fiction, once noted in "The Solar System and Back," that the planet Mercury is rarely visible when it is truly dark.

"I suspect, in fact," he observed, "that many people today (when the horizon is generally much dirtier and the sky much hazier with the glare of artificial light than it was in centuries past) have never seen Mercury."

In pre-Christian times, Mercury had two names, as it was not realized that it could alternately appear on one side of the sun and then the other. When visible in the evening sky, it was called Mercury and when appearing as a morning star, it was known as Apollo. It was Pythagoras, around the 5th century B.C., who first recognized that Mercury and Apollo were the same celestial body.

A fine

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