Mercury

The Northeast U.S. is now in its single season that’s cloudy and windy, which might remind us of worlds where no breeze has ever stirred, where dust lies flat for billions of years. That’s what the Apollo astronauts saw. Tune in to hear about the characteristics of the planets: Mercury, Earth, Venus and of course we’ll talk about the Moon.

Equinoxes are milestone events on other planets too, but not on Mercury, which is the only planet that moves through space straight up and down, with no axial tilt. Since amount of tilt determines the severity of seasons, Mercury has none, period. It's the only world with a permanent equinox.

This is the year's best chance to see Mercury. There seems to be a small obsession with the solitary orange star that makes its way into the constellation Aries, and how its polar regions remain in eternal darkness.

A report prepared for the Lake Champlain Basin Program has found encouraging drops in mercury and PCB contamination in the lake.Both New York and Vermont…