Venus In The Night Sky (February 2009)

Greetings,

This is a short clip I took of Venus on the 17th of February, 2009 at about 8:00 p.m (given the position of the planet relative to the horizon) - Valentine's Day was around the time of its optimum brightness. Venus (often referred to as "Earth's Twin") is about 40 million kilometers from our home planet and is the second closest planet to the Sun. A solar day on Venus is measured at about 243 Earth days due to its very slow rotation speed; imagine that by the time Earth finishes 243 days, Venus finally completes one full of its own days! The planet is comparable to Earth in both size and mass, and therefore both planetary bodies have identical gravitational forces, but is also ranked as the brightest (or one of the brightest) objects in the night sky, not only because of its close proximity to Earth, but predominantly as a direct result of its highly reflective atmosphere (reflective high level clouds, as well as sulfuric compounds and other reflective particulates are a part of the Venusian atmosphere). At times, Venus is so luminous that it is capable of sometimes casting a shadow on Earth!

Despite its high capacity to reflect large amounts of incoming solar radiation, and thereby preventing much of it from reaching the surface, Venus remains quite hot near and at the surface due to its intense carbon dioxide (a strong and principle greenhouse gas) concentration - on Earth, CO2 comprises for just a fraction of a percent (deemed a gas in trace amounts), whereas Venus, it's as large as 98% in gaseous concentration, so the heat is rather extreme at the surface and can be as sweltering as 730 Kelvin (457 Celsius), making it quite a bit hotter than its neighbor, Mercury, despite that planet being closest to the Sun. Venus is also unique in that it has a large axial tilt (~177 degrees from the plane of the ecliptic) and consequently has a retrograde spin by comparison to most other planets and moons. As a result of the large angular axial tilt, the North Pole appears to counter-intuitively lie at the "South" and the South Pole to the "North". This radical tilt may have been caused by a large impactor colliding with Venus very early in its history, possibly not long after complete formation of the planet.

In any case, I hope you like the brief footage and that the planet left you in awe in addition to managing to arouse your curiosity. The video was taken from the West Island of Montreal, which is in Eastern Canada in the province of Quebec. This is also looking in the Western direction. Unfortunately, Venus will slowly disappear from view into late March 2009 as it goes out of phase and slowly travels between the Earth and the Sun, but you can still catch the spectacle until then (weather permitting, of course) just following sunset and up till about 9:00 p.m EST (Eastern Standard Time) before it descends below horizon level towards the Northwest.

Thanks for watching, and please don't hesitate to visit my profile to view other sky-related phenomena videos and to subscribe if they are of interest to you!


~Trav.~

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[54spiritedwill54]

awesome :) Venus is very bright like an evening star. ive seen this also. i heard by friday night (february 27, 2009), the moon and Venus will be very close together, can't wait for this to happen!

[Rain1290]

Really? I would love to see that tonight (the 27th), though the weather won't be permitting it here, unfortunately.:( Maybe someone might post the spectacle on Youtube.

Thanks for waching and commenting!

~Trav.~

[thiccygirl]

so cool its really venus