Venus has erupted into view in the eastern morning sky during the past couple of weeks.
. But because most of the dark side of Venus is directed toward Earth, all we can see of it at best, is an exceedingly thin crescent, perhaps no more than a few percent illuminated by the sun.
Somewhere in between these two extremes, is a compromise, where Venus appears relatively large, while displaying a significant fraction of the illuminated portion of its disk. That comes when the disk of Venus appears one-quarter illuminated — much more than when it's nothing more than a hairline crescent — and at the same time, it's roughly 41 million miles from us and its apparent disk size is about two-thirds that of when it appears largest.
And interestingly, its pinnacle of brilliance this month is not limited to just one day, but runs from Sept. 16 through Sept. 26. So, through a telescope during September, it displays a large, brilliant, beautiful crescent that waxes in phase all month while shrinking in size. When September opened, Venus was only 12-percent illuminated, but by month's end, that figure will have increased to 36-percent; but because it will have receded 17 million miles from Earth, it will appear more than one-third smaller than it did at the start of the month. Planetary, stellar and lunar meetings
On the same morning that Venus is at greatest brilliancy , wait until about an hour before sunrise and then, using your clenched fist at arm's length , go roughly"two fists" to Venus' lower left to catch sight of much fainter
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