Venus and Jupiter Together in Taurus on the Morning of July 5, 2012 - Philippines

Venus and Jupiter on the morning of July 5, 2012.

Venus and Jupiter magnified.

It's Independence Week in the US and there's been much talk about the co-called Thunder Moon (because of frequency of thunderstorms) on the 4th of July. Well, I didn't get to see that because of bad weather, but this morning, I looked out to the East and there was Venus and Jupiter together with Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus. Frankly, I've known these two planets have been there for a while, but it's only now I got the chance to take a look at the, soak them in and even take a few pictures with my iPad. Sure, the camera of the iPad 2 is wanting, but it can still take some good pictures of the sky, I must say. If you have a Retina iPad, then you can use that for better results. Anyway, enjoy these photos of Jupiter (the fainter object) and Venus (the brighter object).

Download the Venus Transit iPhone/iPad App for June 6, 2012

The transit of Venus across the face of the Sun (begins at 06-06-06:12am-2012-varies with location) is the last for this century, which makes it a prominent event. I thought it may just be prominent enough to warrant an app for the iPhone (or iPad), so I did a search and there it was, an app especially made for the June 6, Venus transit!

The Venus Transit app of 2012 boasts of Timer, Simulation, Visibility, and Info tabs. If you click on Simulation,  you will be given Ingress and Egress to choose from. The labels are self-explanatory and tapping on one of them calls up a realistic animation of a magnified Venus either ingressing or egressing with the limb of Sun in the backgound. A timer keeps count and you are given instructions to hit the screen to log the time of contact. But that's only the simulation. The actual logging of contact times is not available until the transit itself, according to the app. Through the app, you can contribute to an experiment where amateur astronomer participants can send in their contact times of the transit.

If you tap the Visibility tab, you will get a map of your location, which also shows the dates and times for the ingress and egress (interior and exterior) of Venus in your area as well as the time for sunrise and sunset. The Info tab gives details of the developers, led by Astronomy Without Borders, with credit to Rikkert Koppes of DDQ Scientific & Educational Apps.

The Venus Transit iPhone App is available for free in the Apple App Store.

UPDATE: During the Venus Transit 2012, an error (possibly due to Internet connectivity or a glitch in the app itself) in the display of the counter prevented the app from being used in the experiment.

Venus Disappears behind the Moon (Metro Manila, Philippines, May 16, 2010, 7:36 PM.)

The sky was clear and the air still. Just after sunset on the 16th of May in the Philippines and elsewhere, people saw something beautiful in the sky. It was the setting crescent Moon with Venus just above the darkened part of the lunar disk. Not everyone knew it was coming, but it was really a spectacle that was hard to miss. "Beautiful!" People said, and they took photographs with their cell phones. The next day, the event was the main story featured on Yahoo!.

Yes, Venus and the Moon together was a beautiful sight. Venus is actually on the opposite side of the Sun and it's position relative to the moon the that day made for an astronomy spectacle for everyone. But after looking at the two together for a while and taking photographs, most people went on their way. Little did they know that if they had waited a bit longer, they would have witnessed Venus move closer to the Moon and wink out as it is finally fully obscured by the lunar disk in what is called, by the way, a lunar occultation.

For those who didn't realize that the Moon would cover Venus, well, it happened at 7:36 pm. If they had waited, they would have seen Venus move closer to the lunar disk's edge and slowly weaken in brightness until it gets "snuffed out" like a candle - but we all know that it's just behind the Moon!

Superstitious people have asked the significance of such an alignment of the Moon and Venus. But really, there's nothing to it from the scientific point of view. It's just one object blocking the view of another in space. But historically, the "crescent Moon and star" is a recurring symbol in the Islamic world since ancient times and the motif appears in several Islamic country flags (left).

As early as the 14th century B.C., the crescent and star symbol was already associated with the Moabites of the book of Genesis in the Bible. It was also a part of Sumerian iconography with the crescent representing the Moon god Sin, and the star representing the goddess of fertility, Ishtar.

It really pays to look at the sky sometimes even when you're not expecting anything to see or happen. You might get lucky like the hundreds of people who saw Venus and the Moon together. Luckier were the ones who waited to see Venus get covered up by the Moon and then appear again later at the other side. It would have taken a lot of patience, though!

The pictures here were taken by this writer with a cellphone camera, thus, there is slight image elongation. The photo on top shows Venus as it nears the lunar disk. The smaller one at the left shows Venus just before it hid behind the Moon.The orange blur at the top left corner is a plane that has just left the airport.

See more spectacular photos and videos of the May 16, 2010 lunar occultation of Venus over the Philippines in Erica Valdueza's The Sky Above.

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