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Comment by imjustsaying | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of another thing a lot of people have been noticing lately with more time to look up.

What's been up with Venus? It's been really bright for weeks if not months now.

Venus is only a few weeks away from its inferior solar conjunction, which is approximately the point in its orbit (recurring about every 19 months) where it most closely approaches Earth: https://in-the-sky.org/news.php?id=20200603_11_100

Interestingly, Venus' brightness is currently near its peak, even though the conjunction itself is still several weeks away. At the point of closest approach, the planet will be almost 3x bigger in angular area than it is today, but we will be seeing a much smaller fraction of its sunlit side.

That is one of Heinrich Dorrie's 100 Great Problems of Elementary Mathematics:

https://www2.washjeff.edu/users/mwoltermann/Dorrie/MaxMinPro...

Venus is currently very close to us. See:

https://theskylive.com

Also the air is a lot cleaner these days with everyone staying at home.

Actually, it was extremely bright here even before anyone ws in lockdown. I particularly remember when it was in the western sky near the moon several moons ago.

I was wondering the same thing!

They just have more time now to actually look up. Venus is same as ever, the brightest object in the sky besides the Sun and the Moon. It was at its greatest elongation from the Sun in late March, so of course it's very visible.

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