By Laurie Engelhardt | 2025-02-03
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Waxing crescent Moon and waning crescent Venus, February 3, 2025 (not to scale)
On 02/03/2025 by Gwen Forrester| DeKalb County, Tennessee, USA
Venus has been shining at its brightest recently, accompanied by the waxing crescent Moon, as its own crescent phase wanes. Tonight they were at roughly equal illumination as viewed from Earth. The orbital period of Venus is 224.7 earth days, but because we are orbiting the Sun as well, we see it pass through its cycle of phases over a period of 19 months, while the Moon’s orbital period of 27.3 days shows us a cycle of 29.5 days from one full moon to the next, as we have both traversed nearly 29 degrees of our orbit around the Sun in that time.
Moon: 6” f/8 Newtonian, Canon M200
Venus: 8” f/8 Newtonian, 2.5x Barlow, ZWO ADC, ZWO ASI224mc