William Atkins
Friday, 27 February 2009 20:17
Science -
Space
Page 2 of 3
The Moon and Venus will appear slightly different in orientation from each other in Europe, for instance, with Venus about four degrees above the Moon.
In South America, Venus will be nearly to the left of the Moon and more low in the west-northwestern sky than as seen in North America.
Australians will see Venus very much higher and to the right of the Moon. [Author’s note: This article was written on February 27 in the United States, but February 28 in Australia, so they will see the two in slightly different positions on that later date.]
And, from just about everywhere else on the Earth, you see quite a bright and interesting scene from these two bodies in the night sky.
And, of course, they are not really very close to each other, but only appear close from our point-of-view (our perspective) here on good old planet Earth.
In other words, this "apparent" closest approach of the two bodies is called a conjunction.
That
is, when defined in positional astronomy it means the positioning of two celestial
very close together, as seen on Earth, when they really aren't very
close together in reality (when considering their distances from
Earth).
The Moon is on average about 238,800 miles (384,400 kilometers) from Earth, and Venus is much farther from Earth—about 67 million miles (108 million kilometers).
In orhter words, Venus is about 280 times further away from the Earth as the Moon.
Page three concludes with times to see the event from North America.
