[ETL]

I think the occultation took place when both the moon and Venus were invisible in the US (or at least most of it).

But as I pointed out before, daytime is the best time to observe Venus in its crescent phases. And it would have been easy to find it in this case given that it was right near the moon, which is usually easy to see in the daytime sky.

[Verginius Rufus]

But the moon becomes invisible when it is a very narrow crescent. I saw the moon before sunrise on Dec. 11 and it was a pretty narrow crescent then...it was cloudy this morning so I did not attempt to see it, but it would have been narrower.