Sky Sight: Moon and Venus will huddle Sunday at sunset

Venus, the "evening star", is impossible to miss in the west sky lately, brilliant brighter than n '39. any real star. On Sunday night, July 15th, he will snuggle up close to the crescent moon, making it an easy sky event – weather permitting.

The two celestial objects are, of course, separated by millions of kilometers in space, but they will appear about 1 degree apart in the sky – approximately the width of a finger on an outstretched arm.

You can easily spot the pair while the sun goes down until the pair starts later in the evening. . Just find a place with a good view of the western horizon. In fact, if you go out while the sun is still up and you find the moon, then use the finger extension arm measuring device, you may be able to choose Venus. Then tell your friends that you have now seen two planets in the day to the naked eye

(You are standing on the other.

"You will not want to miss this," said Diana Hannikainen, observer for Sky & Telescope magazine. "These are the two The brightest objects in the night sky. "

Also note that the illuminated part of the moon faces the place where the sun is lying.This angle explains why only part of the moon is brightly lit, from our point of view.It is only when the sun and the moon are on the opposite sides of the earth that the moon appears full (with one rises like the moon). other)

Standing on the moon on Sunday night, you would see an Earth e

No special equipment is needed, but if you have binoculars or a small telescope, take them out and see if you can see some craters on the moon for them especially along the line where the sun and shadow meet.

If your telescope is powerful enough, you'll see that Venus is shaped like a football, say the Sky & Telescope editors. Like the moon, it goes through phases. Here's how it works:

Venus rotates much closer to the sun than the Earth (a year on Venus is only 225 days-Earth). If you look at all this from above, Venus would run on the inner track, periodically lapping the Earth. When Venus is on the other side of the sun (but not blocked by the sun), she can be almost fully enlightened from our point of view. But when it is "on the side", it is only partially illuminated.

Another cool thing to look for: The shaded part of the moon will be dark, of course, but it will be visible. Why? The sunlight bounces off the Earth and reflects on the shaded part of the moon and comes back to us. This is called earthshine

Amazing Moon Facts

There is no permanent "dark side" of the moon. The moon, as it turns, has days and nights all around. But since the rotation of the moon around its axis corresponds almost perfectly to its orbit around the Earth, we see only one side

There is no such thing as full moon. the moon is in a line, we see what we call a full moon, but it's never 100% full. When the alignment is 100% perfect, a total lunar eclipse occurs. But since the orbit of the Earth around the Sun is in a slightly different plane than the orbit of the Moon around the Earth, this perfect alignment is rare

The Moon Leaves . we at about 1.5 inches a year. The cause is a complex gravitational interaction that creates tides and simultaneously slows the rotation of the Earth. We live at a time in the grand scheme of time when lunar (and solar) eclipses are possible. Eventually, in hundreds of millions of years, the moon will be too far from the Earth for total eclipses – and the day of Earth will be about a month away.

Related: Why a Huge Full Moon on the Horizon

Robert Roy Britt, born at NoPho, has written for In & Out since created in 2005. Britt began his journalism career in New Jersey newspapers in the early 1990s. He then became a science writer and editor of the online media sites, Space.com and Live Science. He wrote four novels.