My mind id on Venus, because she (it) is bright in the evening sky, and because it (she) will probably be the subject of my second “Longer View” book. There will have to be a minor section on the question of referring to “She or It?,” and a major one on the famous eight-year Venus cycle.
These pairs of pictures show Venus’s movements in the evening and morning skies of 2017, 2018, and 2019.
The views are from latitude 40° north, at sunset and sunrise. Venus’s visible disk is exaggerated 600 times in size, as if seen through a telescope. The dashed line is the celestial equator.
(We could have the morning or eastward scene on the left and the evening scene on the right; I’d welcome your opinions on which way around seems more understandable. An advantage of the way shown is that you can imagine Venus descending into invisibility in front of the Sun, between the pictures, and reappearing on the Sun’s right; a possible disadvantage is that north is in the middle, so that the whole pair is a kind of northward view, whereas for sky-gazing we usually orient ourselves by facing south, with east on our left.)
This September, Venus is coming in along the curve that will take it between us and the Sun on October 26. It is reaching a climax of brightness, but is unfavorably low in our twilit sky.
The situations in the preceding and following years is completely different. Clearly, Venus’s performances in successive years vary greatly. Yet they are almost exactly repeated 8 years later.
The Cycle of Venus is not to be confused with the Girdle of Venus, which, laid around the goddess’s hips, made her irresistible – another topic.
She – Venus as the goddess
He – Venus as Lucifer
Thank you for sharing the images of her dance. Beautiful! As far as the pronoun question…Venus’s dance with Earth and Sun feels quite feminine to me (to many). I have a feeling that as you’ve been watching her so closely, you’ve felt this as well but you may be hesitant for human reasons, yes?
I feel the same inclination to sense the Evening Star as a dancer. The test may come when, in page after page about Venus, I have to refer to “her” over and over again.
I’ve always loved these views of Venus with the sun at the same position relative to the horizon in your printed calendar. Are they still available online? I like the sunset on the left. Before I retired I always refereed to astronomical objects by the pronouns that fit the gender of their name in my classes, I guess because I thought them as my friends that I was happy to see return according to their cycles.
No, I’m afraid I won’t be putting the large horizon scenes online, because my plan is to put them into a “Longer View of Venus” book for 8 or more years ahead, starting with 2017. I’m sorry that that means there won’t be any for the current year until I manage to assemble that book, which I hope won’t take me as long as the “Uranus, Neptune, Pluto” book did!
I often irritate my astronomy friends by referring to the planets with the pronouns of their mythological namesakes. Remembering where the names come from adds a layer of allusion and connotation to those bright points of light and tiny telescopic disks. Venus, the Earth and the Moon, and the asteroids have the only feminine names in what is otherwise a patriarchal pantheon.
Sunset on the right and sunrise on the left would follow the convention of drawing northern-hemisphere pictures of the ecliptic with a south-facing perspective. So I think that would be better. But either way seems fine, so long as it’s consistent throughout.
Hi Guy! Thanks for this!
I think I prefer to see the sunrise on the left. That way you can imagine the whole day going by with Venus perched alongside, in front of, or behind the Sun. Looking north and trying to imagine Venus being carried alongside the Sun means you have to “imagine away” the Earth to be able to see through it as you look north.
Apropos of this, I’ve written a post with a technique to “see/imagine the entire orbit of Venus” during the day. The orbit of Venus spans 7 hours of sky (about Regulus to the Pleiades): https://starinastar.com/see-mercury-and-venus-orbits-during-the-day/ – Approximately, the distance from elbow to elbow if you hold your arms up with stretched fingers touching (diagram included in the article!).
I may agree. I had the evening scenes on the left pages of the larhe large Astronomical Calendar Venus and Mercury horizon scenes, mainly because they would be of more interest to most sky-gazers. But used morning-on-left for these cycle illustrations. Then, at the last moment of a bout of reprogramming, stared at it and changed back to evening-on-left.
But surely evening is on the left in your arm-circling idea. It is brilliant, and I’ll be mentioning it.
Aha! Yes, indeed. In the arm-circling method, if you want to “see the extent of the orbit of Venus” it puts the evening view of Venus on the left elbow. That is true. However, the method is used to best effect upon facing south; this makes the evening sky appear on the right. The left hand is surely tracking the Evening Star, but the right side of the body is “orient”ed west.
I submit that it is easier to see the Sun cross the meridian and imagine Venus being carried along with it (on the left, right, back or front of the orbit) than it is to imagine the Sun and Venus crossing behind the Earth. It’s fun to try to spot Venus during the day! No chance of that at midnight unless you are at one of the poles.
As you said, we naturally orient south for observations in the northern hemisphere. I see those great swirling swings of the Venusian orbit all-at-once as if they are painting the sky (as they are in these gorgeous renderings of yours). The erstwhile Morning Star rising before the Sun on the left of the page, the Sun carrying Venus (almost invisible) through the daytime sky and the meridian, then the Evening Star appearing on the right side of the page as it becomes visible again and sets in the west.
Cheers!
Actually Venus is visible until around midnight in an evening apparition in April when inferior conjunction is in June such as the evening apparitions of 2004, 2012, 2020 and additional 8 year increments in the near past and future at 40 degrees north. This is partially due to daylight savings time. Venus is also north of the ecliptic during this period as can be seen in the 2012 Astronomical Calendar. Venus is likely visible until past midnight in these apparitions in April in places like Northern Europe. Venus due to its extreme northern declination in Taurus in April in these apparitions never sets in places just above the Arctic circle like Northern Alaska while the sun does set in April in these places. In those places near and north of the Arctic circle daylight savings time does not play a factor.
Hello Guy,
When is the Kindle edition going to happen?
Yours,
Joseph
I don’t know. I’m in the middle of a struggle that has to do with something called KDP Direct. What relation that has to Kindle I don’t exactly understand. Some CreateSpace books can be made into Kindle versions, but I think that works badly for my products.