July 7, 2023 | by Daniel Giamario |
On Friday and Saturday night, just after sunset, you can witness Venus at her greatest brightness, in her evening star phase. Blazing at -4.7 magnitude, she will now start separating from Mars, following their closest approach of 3.6 degrees at the beginning of this month. Venus is at 24Leo44 and Mars at 28Leo32. She will start rapidly descending into the interior underworld, on the inner track between the Earth and Sun, around August 8. Meanwhile, Mars has a few more challenges to encounter before his journey to the exterior underworld, on the other side of the Sun, beginning September 30.
Looking ahead, coming up on July 20 is the incredible Eighth Venus Gate/Portal, happening in synch with the Sixth Mars Challenge, just after the next New Moon. This sky spectacle occurs near Regulus, the heart star of the Lion Constellation.
For more about the important journey of Venus and Mars and their Great Saga, TOTAMS will present a seminar on July 19!
Additional information about the greatest brightness of Venus from OxfordReference.com:
The greatest brilliancy is “the greatest apparent magnitude of Venus at any particular apparition. It depends on both the planet’s distance and its phase. Venus varies greatly in apparent size; at superior conjunction, its disk is fully illuminated but its diameter is only 10″, whereas at inferior conjunction it is over 60″ in diameter but it is a very thin crescent. Its brightness increases as it moves away from superior conjunction, because of the increasing apparent area of the illuminated disk, but eventually the rapidly thinning crescent counteracts the increase in apparent diameter, and the magnitude starts to fall again. Greatest brilliancy occurs about 36 days before and after inferior conjunction, when Venus is the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and Moon, reaching up to magnitude −4.7.”
Note: Rather than using the terms “inferior” and “superior”, TOTAMS prefers “interior conjunction” (when a planet is between Earth and Sun) and “exterior conjunction” (when a planet is behind the Sun on its orbit).