Hello I am an astronomer, I have a small telescope and I’ve done lots of stargazing. I’ve never seen Mercury (it’s very close to the Sun) and I never pay attention to where it is in its orbit. The only impact it has on my life is unfortunate people blaming it for their troubles.
The thing people call “Mercury retrograde” is an accident of perspective by which if you WERE observing Mercury every night, sometimes it would appear a little east of where it was yesterday & sometimes a little west, from our perspective. But it’s just orbiting; nothing changes.
Unless you’re out there with a telescope and a sextant making charts of the position of a small dot near the Sun, you won’t observe apparent retrograde motion. Even if you were ON MERCURY you wouldn’t notice anything unless you were tracking Earth. It’s just not really a thing.
Anyway if you’re asking yourself “should I really do this thing while Mercury is in retrograde?” and that thing does NOT involve carefully measuring the position of a small dot in the sky while being careful not to point your ‘scope at the Sun, the answer is it doesn’t matter.
Mercury is an amazing planet and should be appreciated for what it is, not just its apparent sky position from our orbital perspective! Check out the brand new close-up pictures Mercury from @ESA_Bepi, which JUST had its #MercuryFlyby!
https://twitter.com/ESA_Bepi/status/1444218331595169795
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