Mercury (planet) at a steep angle. Mercury is 10° above the horizon when the planet appears directly above the Sun (i.e. its orbit appears vertical) and is at maximum elongation from the Sun (28°) and also when the Sun is 18° below the horizon, so the sky is just completely dark. This angle is the maximum altitude at which Mercury is visible in a completely dark sky. At middle latitudes, Mercury is more often and easily visible from the Southern Hemisphere than from the Northern. This is because Mercury's maximum western elongation occurs only during early autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, whereas
The empire on which the sun never sets expression, the sun never sets in the Spanish dominions, but ever shines upon one part or other of them : which, to say truly, is a beam of glory [...]". Thomas Urquhart wrote of "that great Don Philippe, Tetrarch of the world, upon whose subjects the sun never sets." In the German dramatist Friedrich Schiller's 1787 play, "Don Carlos", Don Carlos's father, Philip II, says, "" ("I am called / The richest monarch in the Christian world; / The sun in my dominion never sets."). Joseph Fouché recalled Napoleon saying before the Peninsular War, "Reflect that the sun never sets