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Dan's Starry Skies
by Dan Caton

Latest Update: December 31, 2008


IYA 2009 --the International Year of Astronomy
We start the new year with the beginning of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, a celebration of the discoveries made by Galileo 400 years ago when he was the first to turn the newly invented telescope to the sky. Throughout IYA 2009 we will feature as many of his discoveries as we can on this site. Since Galileo used modest telescopes, less powerful than the cheapest discount store models (or binoculars), you should be able to enjoy better views than he did of each object. We start this month with the phases of Venus, which reaches its greatest angle away from the sun during the evening twilight skies of mid-January. At that time it will form a 90-degree, right-angle with us and the Sun, and will be seen in a telescope to appear like a quarter Moon, with half the visible surface lit. This was one of the proofs that the ancient system of belief that the planets and Sun went around the Earth was incorrect. Since if that were the case, and since we observe Venus to never get farther than about 47 degrees from the Sun, its motion would be along an "epicycle," a circle that it would be traveling on which in itself moves about the Earth (the dotted circle in the first graphic below. In that case we would never see more than a thin crescent of phase for Venus, yet we actually see the full range from "new" to "full." So, Galileo showed that Venus and the Earth really travel around the Sun, allowing the full range of phases, as seen in the bottom figure. (Both figures are from "The Cosmos," a textbook by J. Pasachoff and Alex Filippenko, which I use in my astronomy course.) The additional figures below show Venus in Aquarius in the evening sky throughout the month, and an inset closeup of Venus at about the "quarter" phase as it will look mid-month. that picture, which shows more detail than possible in a ground-based telescope, is from the Hubble Space Telescope, courtesy of NASA.

The incorrect, geocentric model of the solar system, which would not allow all phases.


The correct, heliocentric model, which allows all phases of Venus.


Venus at mid-January evening sky, inset show quarter phase