On Wednesday, July 5, 2017 at 10:56:58 AM UTC-6, Mark Storkamp wrote:
In article ,
Gerald Kelleher wrote:

The images tell their own story of how we see the inner planets but the
eclipse marks a singular moment in time when Venus and Mercury are not
restricted to dawn or twilight appearances but are see as they truly are in
relation to the Sun and to the Earth.

Are you implying that when we see Venus and Mercury during dawn or
twilight, they do not appear as they truly are in relation to the Sun
and to the Earth?

Maybe his phrasing was confusing.

But I think that his _point_ should be obvious.

Yes, whenever we see Venus or Mercury in the sky, except for atmospheric
refraction, we see them in their correct positions.

But the fact that they're usually obscured by the glare of the Sun or
the brightness of the daylight sky, so they are not visible except when
at a high value of elongation, does mean that we can't really see them
going around the Sun in as graphic or obvious a way as we can see, say,
the moons of Jupiter going around Jupiter.

Except for the fact that I've never heard of a solar eclipse that lasted
for an appreciable fraction of 88 days, I don't see how this particular
statement of his rests on any serious misconception of the Solar System.

John Savard