Morning star

Venus will be at westernmost elongation – the peak of its present excursion into the morning sky – on Monday October 23.

Here is the American sky scene.

See the end note about enlarging illustrations.

Arrows through the moving bodies show their movement (against the starry background) from 2 days before to 2 days after. The disks of Venus is exaggerated 150 times in size, to show Venus’s crescent shape.

“Elongation” is angular distance from the Sun. The moment when it reaches a maximum (46.4°) is 23h Universal Time, which is half a day after the time of our scene and in daylight for America. Venus is shining at magnitude -4.4. At the time and place of the picture, it is 35° above the horizon.

As shown in this sphere picture from page 50 of our book about Venus, planet and goddess, this westernmost elongation is the climax of the second or morning half of what I call an apparition-pair, hinging around the planet’s passage past the Sun on August 13.

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ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format.  You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor.  One way: right-click, and choose “View image” or “Open image in new tab”, then enlarge.  Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it.  On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers).  Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.

Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after publishing  it.  If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version.  Or you can click ‘Refresh’ to get the latest version.