Time flies, but it’s difficult to imagine anything flying faster than Mercury is right now. Tomorrow, it enters Virgo at 6:36 pm EDT nearly a full day behind the Sun. Traveling at almost two degrees a day, Mercury will achieve solar conjunction Saturday, and oppose Neptune Sunday, nearly a full day before the Sun does.
All told, that’s a lot to keep up with. Maybe you shouldn’t. Rather than racing around and breaking down, Mercury’s motion implies you may want to make the best, rather than most, use of your time.
Let’s break it down so you won’t have to break down yourself. After blowing through conjunctions to Regulus and Transpluto, Mercury speeds on to its next conjunction, with the Virgo Sun, Saturday afternoon at 4:56 pm EDT. If you stop to think about it (which you should), it will blow your mind.
Mercury’s solar meet-up Saturday will be what is called an exterior (or, “superior”) conjunction. That means the fastest planet will be on the other side of the Sun, about as far away from Earth as it ever gets. It also means we are approaching the halfway point between Mercury retrograde cycles.