Mercury comes into view

Orion402

https://sol24.net/data/html/SOHO/C3/96H/VIDEO/

https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html

The solar system view from the Webb site puts the graphic in context of the time lapse.

Mercury is moving behind the Sun from right to left just as Jupiter was a week or so ago. The reason that Jupiter appeared to move from left to right is because the Earth moves faster so, in a line-of-sight judgment, it moved from an evening to morning appearance from the surface of our planet while Mercury is now transitioning to an evening appearance after its period at dawn.

". . . The ancient hypotheses have clearly failed to account for certain important matters. For example, they do not comprehend the causes of the numbers, extents and durations of the retrogradations and of their agreeing so well with the position and mean motion of the sun. Copernicus alone gives an explanation of those things that provoke astonishment among other astronomers, thus destroying the source of astonishment, which lies in the ignorance of the causes. " Johannes Kepler, 1596

The ability to look into the heliostatic system using a satellite that is free from daily rotational influences is a genuine advancement in solar system research. It is clear that the older terms of direct/retrograde motion for the faster moving Venus and Mercury are different in this perspective than the direct/retrograde perspectives which the first heliostatic researchers used as part of the Ptolemaic framework (as described by Kepler above).

Orion402

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2uCtot1aDg

Mercury is currently passing behind the Sun and displaying its light hemisphere to our slower moving perspective. Mercury is almost as bright as Venus as it passes behind the Sun for the reason that the innermost planet is closer to us when it does so while Venus is much further from the Sun when it passes behind our parent star from our perspective further out.

https://sol24.net/data/html/SOHO/C3/96H/VIDEO/

When Venus passes between the Earth and the central Sun, it is many times brighter than Mercury as Venus is closer to us and Mercury's arc of motion is much more acute in comparison to the wider sweep of Venus. When Mercury returns in a number of weeks, it will be barely discernible against the background stars.