Lunar Occulation of Venus on June 18th
Venus has been really amazing to watch in the western sky lately. From Colorado, it has been a blazing pinpoint of light high above the mountains after sunset. Because of the position of Venus in its orbit relative to ours, this has been an extraordinarily good time to view Venus in a telescope or binoculars.
On Monday, the thin crescent moon will occult, or pass in front of the planet Venus. In North America, the farther east you are, the better view you will have with the best views being in Europe because the event will be high in the nighttime sky there.
Here in Colorado, the occulation will be well underway by the time the moon rises at about 9:00 am MDT. Here’s a screenshot of what I will see (click on the image to see the full resolution version):
Illustration Made with Stellarium
This event will be hard for me to see, needless to say. Still, I might try to see if I can detect anything. Venus is certainly bright enough to see during the day with a pair of binoculars, I just need to watch out for the sun, looking at that area of the sky with ANYTHING that magnifies is quite dangerous, I wouldn’t recommend anyone that’s not experienced trying that. It is generally never a good idea to look through a telescope or binoculars when pointing them in the same general direction as the sun, without proper filters that is.
Even though I won’t see the occulation very well, there’s still an interesting and beautiful alignment of the Moon, Saturn and Venus right after sunset that I’m going to check out. Here’s what it will look like just after sunset in the western sky:
Cool alignment just after dusk. Look west just after sunset.
If you’re lucky enough to have seen the occulation at night, I’d love to hear from you. That means any European readers would be very welcome to post what they saw. I know there are several readers from Scandinavia so please, if it’s clear, please chime in! Let us know how it was for you…
Here’s a more in-depth article on the occulation from Sky and Telescope Magazine.
Technorati Tags: occulation, venus
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POSTED IN: moon, observing the night sky, planets
1 opinion for Lunar Occulation of Venus on June 18th
Adam
Jun 19, 2007 at 8:00 am
I saw the beginning of the Lunar Occulation of Venus from Dubai in the Middle East. Possibly just an hour after sunset, the only objects that could be seen in the sky (due to the very dusty conditions here) were the crescent moon and Venus appearing at about 10-00. It looked spectacular as both were really clear, I guess shortly after that, the moon would have passed in front of Venus. I found this article after a google search today, unfortunately I did not manage to get a snap shot…
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