Wednesday 4 February 2015

Venus, bright in the southwestern sky, early in the evening.

Here are a couple of pictures from my iPad of Venus, last night, a bit after sunset.


 This one has a plane in it, to the right, which just happened to be flying by a minute or so later than the first picture.  That gives an idea of how bright Venus can get in the evening sky.


The brightness of Venus is of course a combination of:

  • nearness to the sun
  • nearness to us
  • high albedo (reflectivity) due to constant cloud cover.
The iPad always surprises me, how well it captures scenes like this. Here's a closeup.  There is very little blurring of the planet due to movement of the Earth.



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