Venus: Evening to Morning Star

On March 22, the planet Venus shifted from being an evening star to a morning star. For several weeks, Venus has been blazing in the evening sky. However, it slowly moved down toward the western horizon. Technically, it reached “inferior conjunction.” This is when it passed (almost) between the Sun and the Earth. Venus didn’t cross the face of the Sun. This event, called a transit, only happens twice a century, and they’ve already occurred in 2004 and 2012 for the 21st century.

In April, over the span of a few weeks, Venus will rise higher and higher in the morning sky as it moves away from inferior conjunction toward its point of greatest wester elongation, when it reaches its peak. It will then fall back down toward the horizon reaching “superior conjunction” when it is opposite the Sun from the Earth. Shortly after that, Venus will once again appear in the evening sky. This entire cycle, called its synodic period (relative to the Earth), takes 584 days to complete. This is longer than Venus’s 225 day orbit because the Earth is also moving along its 365 day orbit.

For more on this, see the following.

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Bruce Gavett

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