Astronomy Picture of the Day -- An Unusual Venusian Oval

NASA ^ | February 13, 2012 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: Why would Venus appear oval? Venus has been seen countless times from the surface of the Earth, and every time the Earth's atmosphere has dispersed its light to some degree. When the air has just the right amount of dust or water droplets, small but distant objects like Venus appear spread out into an angularly large aureole. Aureoles are not unusual to see and are frequently noted as circular coronas around the Sun or Moon. Recently, however, aureoles have been imaged that are not circular but distinctly oval. The above oval Venusian aureole was imaged by the astrophotographer who first noted the unusual phenomenon three years ago. Initially disputed, the unusual distortion has now been confirmed multiple times by several different astrophotographers. What causes the ellipticity is currently unknown, and although several hypotheses hold that horizontally oriented ice crystals are responsible, significant discussions about it are still taking place.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit & Copyright: Doug Zubenel (TWAN)]

[SunkenCiv]

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[cripplecreek]

angularly large aureole

I know a girl like that.

[bigheadfred]

I was just out checking on the progress of the upcoming Jupiter-Venus conjunction and saw 2 aerial phenomena that were kind of cool.

A bright light, not like an airplane, moving across the sky that just faded out. A couple of minutes later another one. Different than anything I've seen before.

[dragnet2]

Probably a satellite.

[HP8753]

Iridium Satellites

Iridium Flares

[SunkenCiv]

Her nickname isn’t “Cookie”, by any chance?

[bigheadfred]

Iridium flares. Time and sky position relevant to the sunset seem correct. Thanks for that link.

It was cool, cool, cool to see.

Did see 2 other satellites higher up, and caught them in the binoculars (it’s all I have, hangs head in shame).

[SunkenCiv]

As someone said, could be a satellite; could have been a “shooting star” for that matter, larger ones last longer and move differently.

[bigheadfred]

Whitney was a “shooting star”.

This was way more entertaining.

[HP8753]

Did see 2 other satellites higher up, and caught them in the binoculars (it’s all I have, hangs head in shame).

Don't hang your head in shame. Binoculars are some of the best and least expensive equipment for looking at stuff in the night sky.
Most of the low budget telescopes have way too much magnification.

Rule of thumb in telescopes is 50X per 1" of aperture.
I have a 10" homemade telescope and at 200X things can be wavy if the atmosphere is unsettled.
I use my 10X50 Binos for a lot of sky gazing espescially for Satellite viewing.

That same web site put out a good mobile App for smartphones that works great and will tell you where and when to look for all kinds of satellites, ISS, iriduim flares and regular old satellites.
It was free off the Andriod Market on the phone
"Heavens Above" is the name of the App.

[HP8753]

Jupiter and Venus (brighter one) are visable in the sky to the south,southwest after sunset. Venus will move closer to Jupiter over the next month.
They will be in Conjunction on March 15th.
You can see the 4 biggest moons of Jupiter with 10X binos.

Spotting Scope works pretty good too.

There is another good App for the smart phones called "Where is IO"

It will show you the rise and set times of the planets and also the positions of Jupiters 4 biggest moons.

[bigheadfred]

Thanks for the info. But I don’t have any kind of mobile communicator. Only a landline. And fortunately it isn’t functioning properly. When someone calls it only rings once. Makes ignoring it much easier. ;-)