The Moon and Venus make a pretty pair, don’t they?

I took this shot myself an hour ago as I write this, about 17:00 local time here in Boulder. I used my cell phone camera, then in Photoshop cropped it to 610 pixels wide (the biggest my blog width will allow) and blurred it a tiny bit to reduce the background noise. You can just barely see the "dark" part of the Moon, lit by reflected Earth light.

The pair were closer together last night, and the Moon’s motion around the Earth are separating them more as you read this. But they’ll be back together again on January 26th (they’ll get about 6° apart, 12 times the width of the Moon), and even closer on February 25th, when they’ll be about 3° apart! That’s a really nice photo op, so be prepared for it. If I can get such a nice shot with just my crappy phone, imagine what real photographers with nice equipment can get. I hope to see lots of gorgeous pictures of the pair then.

Just an hour or so ago as I write this (Saturday, November 26, 2011) I was sitting at my desk at home, puttering around on the computer. I glanced out my office window and noticed the Sun had set a few minutes before. Even though it was still quite bright out, I thought I might be able to spot Venus low in the west. So I leaned back and looked out the window. Venus was easy enough to spot — it’s really quite bright — but to my surprise and delight a very thin crescent Moon was hanging right next to it!

I did two things right away: I tweeted about it, so others could go outside and see the pair if they could, and then I grabbed my camera and went outside. I took literally 111 pictures, and put the best of them on Flickr. Check this one out!

[Click to embiggen.]

This was one of the first of the set I took; the sky was still quite bright. You can see the very young Moon on the right, and Venus way over on the left. I measured the distance off the picture, and they were about 3° apart, or about 6 times the width of the Moon’s face. That’s pretty close!

I kept snapping away as the sky darkened, and moved around a bit to get a more interesting foreground. I like the way this one came out:
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We live on a spinning ball, rotating madly as it moves through space. Once every day the surface of our planet makes a circuit around the imaginary line connecting its poles… well, imaginary it may be, but the effects are quite real, especially when you take long exposures of the night sky. That’s what photographer Brad Goldpaint did, and created this lovely time lapse video he calls Breaking Point:

[If you go to the Vimeo page for the video you can watch it in HD, which you really need to do, as well as make it full screen.]

Amazing, isn’t it? The visual of the stars wheeling around the sky over our head invokes such a wonderful feeling, as if the whole Universe is spinning around us. But it can also be a little odd-looking too. For example, take a look at this picture Brad composed using some of the images he crafted into the video, which he has singled out and called Delineated:

[Click to siderealate.]

Strange, isn’t it? For one thing, it isn’t one long exposure, but instead composed of 60 short exposures added together. If you squint you might see streaks of light, but in reality those arcs are composed of individual dots, the images of stars frozen as they moved across the sky.

It’s also a bit odd due to the fuzzy glow at the bottom. That’s actually the smeared-out light from the Milky Way galaxy as it rose into the frame. Not being a point-like source of light like stars, it has a dreamier, fuzzier quality. Again, from the video, here’s a single exposure from that series:

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Last year, astronomers discovered a remarkable planet orbiting another star: it has a mass and radius that puts it in the "super-Earth" category — meaning it’s more like the Earth than a giant Jupiter-like planet. Today, it has been announced that astronomers have been able to analyze the atmosphere of the planet (the very first time this has ever been accomplished for a super-Earth), and what they found is astonishing: the air of the planet is either shrouded in thick haze, or it’s loaded with water vapor… in other words, steam!

[Click to embiggen the artist illustrations of the planet and star.]

This is very cool news. Um, hot. Whatever.

Here’s the deal: GJ 1214 is a dinky red dwarf star 42 light years away. It’s only about 1/5th the size of the Sun, and shines with only 1/300th of the Sun’s brightness. A project called MEarth studies such nearby red dwarfs, looking for dips in their starlight that indicate the presence of a planet: when the planet passes in front of the star (called a transit), it blocks the light a little bit.
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If you look west after sunset, you’ll probably spot the fourth brightest object in the sky^*: Venus.

But as I looked west recently, I noticed two bright(ish) objects just above it. It didn’t take me long to figure out that they were the planets Saturn and Mars. Both looked red due to their low altitude above the horizon, and both were about the same brightness, so I wasn’t sure which was which. Happily, Sky and Telescope has a map (shown here) and a write-up of what’s what.

Interestingly, although Saturn is far larger than Mars, it’s much farther away, so they appear to be about the same brightness in the sky. All three of these planets will change their positions noticeably over the next few weeks, so you can watch as the dance of gravity morphs their configuration. Also, on August 12 and 13, the crescent Moon will slide past the trio, which should make for a very nice photo opportunity.

Not only that, but if you stay up late, you can catch the Perseid meteor shower as well. I’ll have more about that later. But until then, even people who go to bed early can spot and appreciate the view to the west.

[Update (17:00 MT): I did it! Just saw Venus, with the Sun still more than 34° above the horizon. It was very faint and difficult, but once I spotted it I had it nailed. Persistence pays off, me droogs.]

On Twitter last night I mentioned that the thin crescent Moon was near Venus at sunset, and I got a lot of replies from people who ran outside to see. That was pretty nice!

But that was just after the Sun had set for me here in Boulder, when the sky was getting darker and Venus was easy to spot. But Venus can be seen in broad daylight, if you know where to look! Today is a good day to try, because the Moon is still near the planet, and the Moon is slightly easier to find.

My advice is to try sometime after local noon. Go outside and find the Sun. Duh, that should be easy enough. At about 1:00 local time for you it should be in high in the south. This will put Venus and the Moon about 30° to the left (if you are in the northern hemisphere; reverse all this for the southern). When I make a fist with my arm fully outstretched, it spans about 10°. I have a big hand, so YMMV. But something like three fist-spans away from the Sun, parallel with the horizon, you should be able to see a very thin crescent Moon. It won’t be easy to spot; binoculars might help. Be careful not to look at the Sun though! [Edited to add: don't let kids or people inexperienced with binoculars try this; if they look at the Sun through the binocs Bad Things can happen. Looking at the sky won't hurt, but looking right at the Sun will potentially damage your eye. In fact, your best bet is to put the Sun behind a roof or a building of some sort, which not only prevents you from hurting yourself, but also makes it easier to spot the Moon.]
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Goddess on the mountain top
Burning like a silver flame
The summit of beauty and love
And Venus was her name
–Shocking Blue/Bananarama

Is Venus dead? Maybe not.

First, a way cool picture:

[Click to hugely embiggen. Note (added February 11, 2012): the vertical scale is exaggerated by 30x to show features more clearly.]

That’s Idunn Mons, a mountain on Venus as radar mapped a few years back by the Magellan space probe. The color overlay is a brand spanking new thermal (temperature) map using an infrared detector on the European Venus Express probe, currently orbiting our sister planet. Red is warmer, and as you can see, Idunn appears to be trying to tell us something.

But what’s it saying? OK, here’s the back story:
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