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Keep Your Eye on Venus Tonight! | Almanac.com

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Keep Your Eye on Venus Tonight!

Depiction of Venus and the crescent Moon, as seen from mid-latitude northern locations, just after sunset on June 16, 2018.

Photo Credit
freestarcharts
Bob Berman
January 29, 2019
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Keep your eye on Venus tonight! Our wonderful Evening Star Apparition is at its best in years. Here’s how to enjoy Venus through the summer! Get started this weekend (June 15–16, 2018), as Venus hovers near the crescent Moon in the beautiful twilight sky.

Venus will shine brilliantly in the northwest the first few hours after sunset. It’s not high up, but it’s not too low, either, so it easily shines above houses and hills. Beautiful! The brightest of planets will periodically meet the Moon again, and various stars, like the blue Spica the final evening of August.  

It’s also in a weird place. Venus has been visiting the most northerly part of the zodiac, which places it strikingly to the right of due west. But keep watching it.

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During the next three months, from now through September, it will visibly shift to the left. Each evening at nightfall, it will still hover at about the same height. But it will continually migrate south, or leftward, as it marches from its present home in Gemini through Cancer, Leo, Virgo and into Libra. These adventures will be fun to watch.

Venus will continually get brighter too, until by late summer it will be dazzling enough to cast shadows!

So, watch Venus on Friday and Saturday night after sunset (June 15 and 16) as the young moon sweeps past the “evening star” in the west.

Throughout June, Venus is very prominent in the twilight sky as it attains its highest altitude in mid-northern latitudes. Venus sets roughly 2 1/2 hours after the Sun throughout the month.

It will then periodically again meet the Moon, and various stars, like the blue Spica the final evening of August.  

This is a wonderful Evening Star Apparition, the best in years. Enjoy it each clear evening!

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Comments

Mary Beth (not verified)

4 years 11 months ago

As always Bob, thanks for your knowledge and enthusiasm! I'm really looking forward to watching Venus' southerly trek across the sky. The sun will begin its southerly journey later this week as well and i love Judy simply 'noticing'! I think author Henry Beston described it all beautifully:

"The sun, descending the altar of the year, pauses ritually on the steps of the summer months, the disk of flame overflowing"

"The great sun overflows, the year burns on..."

And..

“We lose a great deal, I think, when we lose this sense and feeling for the sun. When all has been said, the adventure of the sun is the great natural drama by which we live, and not to have joy in it and awe of it, not to share in it, is to close a dull door on natures's sustaining and poetic spirit.”
― Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

PATRICIA SIMON (not verified)

4 years 11 months ago

Found an error in the article about Venus that you might want to correct!

"It was have adventures that will be fun to watch."

I look forward to watching Venus over the next few nights. Thanks!