I hope you got a chance to see the moon nuzzled up to Venus on Feb. 1, and perhaps even checked out the pair through binoculars.
Now, with the moon gone from the scene, it’s a great opportunity to check out Venus with a small telescope.
My first view of Venus through a scope came some 60 years ago. I was just a young teen and had received a telescope for Christmas.
I was so excited I could barely sleep, so one morning before dawn I stumbled out of bed and took it out to the backyard.
There in the eastern sky shone a brilliant “star” I had never seen before.
Upon aiming the scope toward this celestial beacon and focusing the optics, I was stunned. In my eyepiece appeared a white glowing orb shaped like a crescent.
I recall rubbing my eyes and searching the sky while saying to myself, “What’s going on? I don’t see the moon anywhere! What am I looking at?”
It took a few weeks before I realized I had been viewing the planet Venus!
I now wonder if Galileo had the same reaction when seeing Venus for the first time with his telescope. He was the first to note that this planet displayed phases like the moon.
He also realized that this meant Venus must orbit the sun — not the Earth, as Aristotle and the Catholic Church at the time insisted.
It was quite a revolutionary discovery by Galileo and, on a smaller, more personal level, by me.
It’s a sight I’ll never forget, and I still love to aim a telescope toward this beautiful planet.
Right now is a great time to do so. Venus is rounding the sun in our direction. Over the next month or so, as sunlight falls more onto its back side than the front, the planet will show a thinner and thinner crescent.
Not only that, but Venus will also appear to grow as it approaches the Earth. Check out the attached illustration, and you’ll see what I mean.
On Feb. 2, Venus will lie some 47.2 million miles from us and will show a thick crescent. By the 23rd the crescent will have thinned noticeably, and the planet will be only about 34.3 million miles away.
After this, the planet will drop lower in the dusk sky and will become quite difficult to see against the glow of dusk.
But if you could see it during March, it will lie well under 30 million miles away, with a crescent that appears razor thin.
Over the next couple of weeks, it will pass nearly in front of the sun and emerge on the other side. This means that instead of setting after the sun, it will set before it — and will also rise before it in the morning.
By late March and early April, you should begin to see its brilliant glow in the dawn sky.
If you’d like to have a look at that time, you’ll enjoy the same marvelous view I got some six decades ago.
