Venus will appear as a crescent during January
It is very difficult to get a really clear shot of Venus because it is always low to the horizon and its reflected light always passes through a relatively dense part of Earth’s atmosphere. This makes views of the planet subject to much turbulence.
Happy New Year! I hope you all had a great Christmas!
In December, I looked many evenings for the elusive Comet Leonard. I had no luck. A friend of mine and I photographed the night sky just at the time and place where it was supposed to be — over and over. No comet! I had hoped to have a nice photo for you but this comet was elusive and it evaded my efforts.
However, nearby in the sky, where the comet was supposed to be, is the planet Venus. In January, it will be very bright and easily seen in the southwest at sunset. It will be the brightest object in the sky after the Moon. In a small telescope, it will be a beautiful crescent. This crescent will become thinner and thinner as the next months move on.
One project a person with a small telescope might adopt is to see how thin a crescent one can see. I will be doing this and taking images as the planet moves through its orbit early in 2022. Venus will also appear larger and larger over the intervening time the crescent thins. This is because the planet will be moving closer to the Earth and it will appear to get larger in the telescope.
Venus is so bright in the sky because its atmosphere is very white. This atmosphere is composed of carbon dioxide and fine droplets of sulfuric acid. We know this because of satellites that circle the planet and send back data. Some of these satellites have been radar mapping the surface of Venus over several years. As it turns out, Venus is covered with volcanoes, spewing out carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid from the bowels of the planet. The surface is very hot, greater than 700 degrees Fahrenheit, and the surface atmospheric pressure is crushing. Earlier in the 20th Century, when we could not examine the surface, some science fiction authors speculated that Venus might be a sort of jungle planet and, perhaps, a nice place for a vacation! No! Venus would be one of the worst places in the solar system to ever be!
Galileo is very likely to have been the first human to spot the phases of Venus. When he made this discovery and reported it by letter to other fellow scientists in the early 1600s, this rattled some in the Church.
For fun, look up Scholasticism. This is a philosophical/theological view prevalent at this time. It is the welding together of Aristotelian science with Catholic theology. Aristotle had declared that only the Moon had phases and this made a certain theory of the solar system, developed by Ptolemy, the view of the Church.
Venus having phases, as well as certain other astronomical observations made at the time, began to accumulate and it became difficult to support the Ptolemaic view — soon to be replaced by the Copernican view — but reluctantly. Galileo supported the Copernican view and this got him into a lot of trouble with the Roman Catholic Church, being challenged on many sides by the Reformation.
I have included an image of Venus I made. It is very difficult to get a really clear shot of Venus because it is always low to the horizon and its reflected light always passes through a relatively dense part of Earth’s atmosphere. This makes views of the planet subject to much turbulence. If you look at Venus in your telescope, you will see the planet wobble in and out of focus. All images of Venus are time exposures to some degree and even over split seconds, the turbulence boggles the image. See for yourself if you have a telescope.
The beautiful things in the Universe will keep moving reliably along, regardless of what is happening on Earth. Some of these beautiful things we ordinary folks can see with our naked eye, binoculars or small telescopes. Let us see what we can see!