Follow Us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Early risers heading to work or school before dawn will likely notice a very bright star-like object appearing low in the east-southeast sky just before dawn. What’s somewhat surprising is that just a couple of weeks ago this object wasn’t there at all, but now it literally stands out so brightly that it almost catches the attention of travelers who might be traveling east to “Look at me!” the Earth and the sun and moving from the evening sky to the morning sky. And the view will only get better in the coming days and weeks! Rising in the morning In terms of morning visibility, Venus is now, literally and figuratively, “rising to the occasion.” It is now rising before dawn, more than 90 minutes before dawn. From now on, it will rise three minutes earlier each day, so that by December 17 it will rise 3 hours and 50 minutes before sunrise and will shine in a completely dark sky for more than two hours before the first vestige of morning twilight. It will reach its maximum brightness on November 29, when it will shine at a staggering magnitude of -4.9. It is 12 times brighter than its closest planetary competitor, Jupiter, and 25 times more dazzling than Sirius, the brightest of all stars. If you live in a rural area with no interfering light pollution, you may be able to tell that it is casting a visible shadow, and if you follow it until dawn, it will be obvious to the naked eye in broad daylight: a small white spot clearly evident against the blue sky during the day. In a way, we might even consider Venus this year’s version of a “Christmas Star,” shining with dazzling brilliance “…in the east,” like the biblical quote mentioned in St. Matthew. What goes up must come down After reaching its highest point in terms of morning visibility in mid-December, Venus will begin a long, slow glide back toward the sun, rising about 1½ minutes later each morning from New Year’s Day until the end of March. By then, Venus will appear at sunrise, about 100 minutes before sunrise. Venus will continue to gradually fall and progressively rise later in the spring and, in late June, will rise less than an hour before sunrise and finally disappear into the bright twilight of dawn in July. Venus will then take a sort of “summer sabbatical” and won’t reappear again until about this time next year, when it will begin a very beautiful nighttime appearance. So if any of your friends or family tell you that they saw a “strange UFO” on their way to work or school recently, now you can clear it up. It’s not ET, it’s just Venus. Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at the Hayden Planetarium in New York. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, Sky and Telescope, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, and other publications.
