Starship Asterisk*

The last several days I have noticed a bright star in the eastern morning sky. This morning i got my field binoculars to take a closer look and this star has a cresent shape. Assuming its in our solar system it must be one of the planets? Does anyone know and are we on a closer orbit than normal?
Thanks

Venus
http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... =9&t=21980

See here, here, here, and here for pictures of the crescent moon and Venus.

Here is another great APOD with both crescents Or this APOD

Hello,

Actually, i don't understand why there is an enormous white crescent in the blue sky of this picture...
Is it Venus? If the enormous crescent is Venus, thus how could Venus be so big in our sky, compared to the moon, while Venus is so far away from us, compared to our satellite? Why? Is it an optical illusion?
Or if the enormous crescent represents the moon, so the little crescent is Venus. In this case, why the moon would be so big, in our sky?

If someone can answer me, thank you a lot
Have a very nice day!

Céline

Celine: Those pictures were obviously taken with some sort of telescope or telephoto lens. The Moon (large crescent) is about 1º in angular size which means Venus (the little one) is ~1/20º. That's not big by any stretch of the imagination.

VoijaRisa wrote:Celine: Those pictures were obviously taken with some sort of telescope or telephoto lens. The Moon (large crescent) is about 1º in angular size which means Venus (the little one) is ~1/20º. That's not big by any stretch of the imagination.

The Moon's angular diameter is 1/2°, or 30 arcminutes. Venus only shows a fine crescent at inferior conjunction, when its angular diameter is about 1 arcminute. So images like this should show about a 30-to-1 difference in the apparent diameters- regardless of whether they look physically large in the image or not.

Hi

Thank you a lot for your explanations I even feel a little ridiculous now... The Moon is closer, so it appears bigger (=the large crescent), while the angular diameter of Venus is much more little (about a 30 to 1 difference, yes!!).

Thank you, have a very good day,

Céline