Sunday, January 15, 2006
Where is Venus now?
Image Credit SOHO.Venus has left the evening skies, and I shall miss its bright beacon, a companion to me on my walk home from work. Venus will soon appear as the Morning star, and will accompany my morning cuppas, so I'm not distraught.
At the moment though, Venus is too close to the Sun for human eyes to see, but it is the field of view of SOHO's Lasco C3 camera. The image above shows Venus near the top (the bright object with the line through it, the line is an artifact). The bright object to the bottom right is Mercury. A larger image can bee seen here. A great movie showing Venus and Mercury approaching the Sun, to the accompaniment of billowing gusts of solar matter is here (288K MPG) or high resolution here (1.8M MPG).
Venus was at inferior conjunction on Saturday the 14th (ie almost directly in line with us and the Sun. Last Year Venus transited the Sun, but it will be a while (2012) before Venus transits again, and over a century until the one after that. However, this year we will be treated to a Transit of Mercury (November 9).
# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 9:16 am 
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