The Phases of Venus

Venus is the second planet from the Sun, and makes for a satisfying viewing target. Though it is covered with clouds at all times, it is not devoid of detail.

The planet Venus shows phases, like the Moon. In fact, the most common comment I hear when showing Venus through my telescope is "It looks like the Moon!"

During the daytime, it can be seen as a ghostly moon-like object. It takes great care to keep the telescope from viewing the Sun. If this can be managed, Venus shows up well during the day. The trick is to position the telescope away from the Sun, on the same side of the Sun as Venus, by using the shadows on the telescope without looking through the scope (and probably covering the end of the scope to keep the sunlight out!) Then, once you're sure there's no Sun in the scope, look through and sweep away from the Sun. Practice sweeping in the correct direction before your eyeball is at the scope.

At night, you don't have to worry about this. If anything, you may find Venus is a bit too bright. A color filter or neutral density filter can help cut the light down a bit to make it more comfortable to view. Careful and patient use of a variable polarity filter can reveal murky details in the clouds of Venus.

Venus shows a full set of phases, from new and thin crescent phases to a Full Venus.

It can be a lot of fun to watch Venus from week to week as its phases change. It goes much more slowly than the Moon, overall, but there are some phases that seem to shoot past, and others (like full) that seem to last forever.

Ordinary binoculars won't show the phases clearly, but when Venus is away from "full" it'll sure look like something's wrong. Crescent phases can take on all sorts of interesting shapes in binoculars, sometimes looking like a line, other times looking just mis-shapen.

For the early Greeks, Venus has two names depending on whether it was a morning star or an evening star. As a morning star it was Phosporus, it was called Hesperus as an evening star. In the sixth century B.C. Pythagoras recognized it as a single object, which was named Aphrodite and later given the Roman name Venus as the goddess analogous to Aphrodite.

Viewing Planet Mercury

Planet Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun. Its orbit around the Sun is entirely within the orbit of the Earth. This means that from our point of view, Mercury always appears in the sky near the Sun. Sometimes it is seen setting in the evening shortly after the Sun sets, other times it is seen in the morning just before the Sun rises. At other times it is invisible, lost in the Sun's glare.

The early Greeks had two names for Mercury, depending on whether it was seen as a morning star or an evening star. As a morning star it was Apollo, as an evening star it was Hermes. It was later recognized to be a single object, and the name Hermes, the messenger of the gods, was the precursor to the Roman name Mercury that we use today.

Mercury can be seen by eye as a medium-bright red-orange star near the Sun. Binoculars will show that it's not a star, but a very small disk-like shape that looks un-star-like. It looks much the same in a telescope, though under good conditions it will show a "phase" like one of the Moon's phases, most commonly a crescent, since it is usually seen when well away from the Sun. It doesn't show any detail in telescopes, it just appears as a small reddish-orange shape, its shade of color varies some because of Earth's atmosphere.

At times it moves very quickly across the sky. Its position relative to the Sun, and to the stars in the sky, can be seen to change rapidly from day to day. It makes an interesting project to keep track of Mercury's position in the sky on a star chart over the course of a month or two.