Venus Shines Bright with Moon on Sunday evening

Venus Shines Bright with Moon on Sunday evening

Mangalore Today News

Mangalore, May 17: On Sunday (May 16) fine spring evening, Venus shined like a brilliant beacon in the western sky for a few hours after sunset and joined by a star cluster and a moon. 

 

 

Just to the right of the crescent moon on Sunday evening was the open star cluster Messier 35 in the constellation Gemini, one of the largest and brightest star clusters in the sky.

This star cluster is about 3,000 light-years away from us, about as far as the farthest stars we can see with our naked eye. It is also almost exactly opposite the center of the Milky Way Galaxy in our sky.

Sky watchers in Mangalore have used binoculars to catch the full effect. But the moon and Venus were fine sight to the sky watchers. Some of them, who did  not have binoculars, have glanced the shining venus in naked eye.

Venus is gradually getting nearer to the Earth
This week it will be 1.4 astronomical units distant, an astronomical unit being the average distance between the Earth and the sun (about 93 million miles, or 150 million km). In a telescope, it looks like a tiny gibbous moon.

By Aug. 20, Venus will be at its greatest elongation from the sun, and 0.7 astronomical units away, and look like a quarter moon. From there it quickly moves between the Earth and the sun, passing just below the sun on Oct. 29, only 0.3 astronomical units away, and moving into the morning sky.

Even more startling is its change in size, from 12 arc seconds in diameter this week to a full arc minute on Oct. 29, five times larger in diameter. There are 60 arc minutes in 1 degree of the night sky.

For comparison, the full moon in the sky is about 30 arc minutes, or 1/2 a degree, wide. The tip of your pinkie finger held at arm’s length could cover about 1 degree.

The next time Venus passes between us and the sun will be on June 5, 2012, when it will actually pass directly in front of the sun as seen from Earth, in what is called a transit.

The last time Venus transited the sun was in 2004, and won’t do it again until 2117, so this will be the last chance to see a transit of Venus in your lifetime.