If you’ve recently stepped outside after sunset and happened to look west, you may have noticed a surprisingly bright “star” staring at you that seems to float in the sky. yeah. Is it a helicopter, is it a supernova, or-gasping–UFOs?
no. It is Venus, from the Sun he is the second rock, the evil twin of the Earth, who often imitates his UFO.
If you haven’t seen this planet before, now is the perfect time to take a look. Not hard to find. When the sky gets dark, go outside and look west and then up.Venus is Unbelievably It is so incredibly bright that it is often mistaken for a UFO. I often get emails on this subject from people who are a little panicky. They can’t believe it’s real.
Not only is it real, it’s a whole planet, orbiting closer to the Sun than it does to Earth. Venus is 110 million kilometers from the Sun, while we are 150 million kilometers away. Because it moves faster around our home planet, its year is shorter than ours, lasting only about 225 Earth days.
How Venus looks in the sky depends on where it is in its orbit. Imagine standing at a distance from a race car circling a track. For reference, let’s say we have a flag that indicates the center of the track. The car starts between you and the flag, passes in front of it, and moves left to right. Once you reach the right side of the track, it will take a curve and start moving from right to left. Go along the other side of the track, behind the flag, until you reach the left side. You’ll see it roll up and move towards you, then left to right again. Pass in front of the flag and the cycle begins again.
The situation is the same for Venus, except that its orbit is an orbit and a flag centered on the Sun. When it comes closest to us in space, it is sometimes seen passing very close to the Sun in the sky. This point is called a subjoin. Venus moves “to the right,” strictly west, until it reaches its furthest point from the Sun, called the greatest western elongation. It then reverses direction while going around that part of the orbit, moving eastward or “leftward.” It passes behind the Sun on the opposite side of its orbit, reaches Kamigashi, and continues to its easternmost point, the greatest eastern elongation. Turn the corner again and begin heading west until it passes the Earth again short of the Sun. Then the dance begins again. (Incidentally, this reciprocating motion helped provide the inspiration for the term “planet” itself.in the planet“–means ‘wanderer’ in Greek. )
Venus is most easily visible at its greatest elongation from the Sun. At maximum western elongation it appears like the morning star rising long before the sun rises, and at maximum eastern elongation it appears like the evening star setting late. That is our current situation. Venus reaches its maximum eastward elongation on her June 4th, when she is 45 degrees away from the Sun. As our star sinks below the horizon and the skies darken, Venus becomes an unmissable bright planetary beacon.
However, astrodynamics aren’t the only thing that makes Venus “pop.” Planetary science is also a factor. Venus is about the same size as Earth, but unlike our world, it has a very dense carbon dioxide atmosphere. This thick blanket of gas absorbs infrared light and traps it as heat that causes global warming. However, Venus’ clouds also reflect visible light efficiently. While this is the situation that shines in the Venusian sky, it also has the downside of pressure cooking at a temperature of about 475 degrees Celsius. That’s enough heat to melt lead, leading to Venus’ well-deserved status as “Earth’s Evil Twin.”
But that’s not all. A careful look at the interplay of Venus’ light and geometry reveals something simple yet profound about our solar system. Like the Moon, Venus has phases (but you’ll need a telescope or binoculars to see them). When it is behind the Sun, it can be seen fully illuminated like a full moon. When it moves eastward in its elongated direction as it does now, we see it half-lit, but then a crescent that fades more and more as it moves between us and the Sun. will be It is in the ‘new’ phase because when it is closest to the Sun in the sky, its back side, the unlit half, is visible. In the west stretch, it will be half lit again. It then approaches the far side of the Sun, where the cycle repeats itself.
These phases are not just a beautiful sight to see through an eyepiece. Galileo noted the phases of Venus during his observations in the early 17th century and used it as a refutation of the then prevailing heliocentric model of the solar system. In such a model, Venus and the Sun are both orbiting the Earth, with Venus moving closer to us. However, if that were the case, Venus would not appear to be a full moon because it would not be behind the Sun as seen from Earth. Galileo showed that a perfect Venus is definitive evidence for the competing Sun-focused ‘heliocentric’ solar system model developed by Copernicus.
Galileo later paid the price when the Catholic Church accused him of heresy, but fortunately there is no such punishment today. Observe Venus as much as you can and enjoy its scenery.
Special events worth noting
June 2: Mars passes directly through the Beehive star cluster, a simple “binocular object” containing dozens, and possibly hundreds, of visible stars.
June 11-13: Venus will pass about 1 degree away from the Honeycomb cluster.
June 21: After sunset, Venus, a thin crescent, and Mars form a tight triangle to the west. During this time, Mars and Venus will be in close proximity for several weeks.
July 9th: Mars and the bright star Regulus are less than 1 degree to the upper left of Venus.
July 26th: After sunset, Venus and Mercury will be near the horizon, about 5 degrees apart. Regulus will also be close to this pair.
This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the author. Scientific American.
