On Wednesday morning/afternoon, the Moon will appear to pass directly in front of Venus for people in North America.
This kind of thing is called an occultation, and it doesn’t happen very often, so you should take the chance to watch. It won’t be easy! Since it happens in broad daylight, Venus will be hard to find. So will the Moon: it’ll be a thin crescent, just a few days before new.
The lunar-occultations website has a map of viewability and a table with times for big cities in the US (Boulder’s not listed, grumble grumble, but Denver is close enough). For me, the Moon’s disk will slip in front of Venus at about 1:25 local time, and Venus will reappear at 2:06. The Moon will be about 23 degrees above the horizon, so it’ll clear the mountain range to my west. If it’s not cloudy, I’ll have a decent shot at seeing this.
Again, though, it’s not easy. The table linked gives the azimuth of the event as well, the direction to face. 0 is north, 90 east, 180 south, and 270 west. For me, it’ll be at an azimuth of 224 degrees, or southwest. So I’ll face southwest, and look about 24 degree up (roughly, twice the width of your outstretched fist). I’ll be using binoculars at least at first; that’ll make the Moon and Venus easier to see, and then I’ll test my eyes and look for it unaided. You can see pictures of an occultation from 2007 at the popastro site.
The actual event is pretty cool; the Moon and Venus will appear to get closer and closer, and then bloop! Venus will disappear. Since Venus is actually a disk, and not a point source, it’ll actually take a brief moment for it to disappear; it’s not all at once. It depends on the phases of the Moon and Venus, and the position on the disk of the Moon where Venus gets occulted (if it’s near the middle the event is quicker, near the poles and it takes longer). It should take somewhere between 20 seconds and a minute, if I’ve done my math right.
So go out and take a look!
Hat tip to Amanda for announcing this.
March 4th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
GAH! On a day that I have off, with the weather forecast clear, and a new telescope to boot, I am enthused! Oh wait, I live in Olympia, WA, and we’re not in the veiwing area for this event. BAH!
March 4th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
d’oh! Looks like Quebec City isn’t in the game.
March 4th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
By my laborious calculations (OK, OK, I used Starry Night Pro) the event will start at 1:26:05 and run till 1:26:54 for observers in Boulder. So it’ll last 50 seconds and then it’s gone. Then at 2:04:43 it’ll start to exit the other side, and finish exiting (called 4th contact) at 2:05:34 for a 31 second duration exit.
I’m not sure how the geometry can be asymmetrical like that, it doesn’t seem right… Maybe it’s because the lit portion of Venus is asymmetrical with respect to the track of the Moon… Dunno.
Won’t be in the cards for me to see it, though. Virginia is out of the loop… Bummer, but I can’t complain after that super lunar eclipse, nosiree! Dr. Pam at StarStryder had my image or it in her blog, too!
Rich
March 4th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
That sounds exciting. Provided it’s clear and I can manage a good view, I’ll check it out.
March 4th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Well its about time they scheduled one of these astronomy events during the day. Whats with all this late night stuff anyway?:)
March 4th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Rats, I’ll be teaching at that time. (Although I’m sure my students wouldn’t mind taking a break to go moongaze, I don’t think I can justify it with finals coming up….)
March 4th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Big deal. Now if Venus were to pass in front of our moon, I bet THAT would be exciting!!!
March 4th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
An interesting thing Phil doesn’t mention is that the Moon will also be very close to Mercury Wednesday morning. What is interesting to me about the relative positions of Mercury and Venus is that Mercury is currently higher in the sky than Venus. (It will be so for around a week I think.)
It’s been fun to me watching the “cosmic dance” between Mercury and Vneus over the last two weeks. First Mercury was lower and farther towards the North on the horizon than Venus. Now it’s higher and farther to the South along the horizon, than Venus.
So if you look for Venus and the Moon shortly after Venus rises, you should also be able to spot Mercury.
For my geographic location, W106°54’11.0″ N34°03’58.0″, a few degrees South of Phil:
Mercury rise: 05:19 MST 05 Mar
Moon rise: 05:21
Venus rise: 05:27
Note that at my coordinates civil twilight begins at 6:06 MST and it will be quite tough to find Mercury by then. It will be about magnitude 0, while Venus will still be easy at about -3.7.
George
March 4th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
I’ll be in class
March 4th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Well, it’s supposed to be visible here, barely. White Plains, NY, is the closest city listed, but the Moon will only be 3 degrees above the horizon. (Time to make friends with someone on the top floor of the apartment building nearby.
)
March 4th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
In the 70s I saw a very late cresent moon rise before dawn with Venus behind it. I had my 3″ refractor trained on the moon just as Venus popped back into the view at the moon’s equator. It was one of the most stunning astronomical events I have ever seen (and I have seen all manner of solar and lunar eclipses during my life.)
The odd thing is that I saw a small but very pure purple dot at first. The dot then changed color rapidly through the visual spectrum to red before the brilliant white Venus emerged. I wonder to this day if that visual effect was caused by gravitational bending of Venus’s light around the moon.
March 5th, 2008 at 12:21 am
This is just a dry run for 2012. The Moon really will shallow Venus; y’all will see it vanish, never to reappear!
Now, remember, Venus is Earth’s “twin”. It’s about the same size as Earth. Close enough for this test anyways.
Assuming everything works, The Moon will eat the Earth in 2012. Some ancient geeks in Central America discovered this fact centuries ago; The Spanish tried to cover it up (why do y’all think they burned the codexes?); but Velikovsky proved it could happen, showing cosmic bodies could and did zoom around the heavens.
March 5th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Bah. Messed up the HTML tags there. Phil, you really need a Preview!
March 5th, 2008 at 12:26 am
“Shallow”? Swallow, I meant swallow. B.A., you really really should have a PREVIEW!
March 5th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Woohoo! Not working until late! And I might just break out my new solar filter as well…
March 5th, 2008 at 4:36 am
Sorry for the OT post, Phil, but I was wondering if you had any thoughts on this: http://www.stuff.co.nz/4426392a10.html. Seems like sensationalist nonsense to me.
March 5th, 2008 at 5:07 am
How do I find out if this will be visible from the UK? And if so what time etc?
I bought my 7 year old son a telescope for Xmas and I know he would love to see this.
March 5th, 2008 at 5:36 am
I’ve posted this picture claiming the Earth setting on the Moon. As far as I know the Earth does not set or rise on the Moon. Any comments?
March 5th, 2008 at 6:53 am
@Richard: if you look at the picture of the path of occultation… UK is out of the picture too. Like me
…Looks like even if It was visible for me I STILL wouldn’t see anything. That’s quite a snowstorm right now.
March 5th, 2008 at 7:39 am
I would have been able to see it…if it wasn’t all cloudy and rainy! Durned weather.
March 5th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Pioneer:
I just posted a comment over there explaining the whole thing.
For those of you who want to see a cool animation of libration:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libration
Enjoy!
Rich
March 5th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Hey! I call DoOver!
Who’s bright idea was it to put this only 8 degrees over my horizon????
March 5th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
6 degrees here
March 5th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Anyone know of a live webcast of this event?
tick, tick, tick…
Steve
March 5th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I couldn’t find it with binoculars here in Northern VA. I saw it a couple of hours ago with Venus a couple of moon diameters away. I should have gone home and got my scope.
March 5th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Heres how we saw it in NZ – see the pictures and accompanying article at stuff
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4428261a11.html
December 31st, 2008 at 7:35 pm
that is so not true!!!!!!!