The sky scene, June 20 morning

The Moon passes Venus on the route down

toward the New Noon situation of June 23/24 – about which there will be more to say.

The Moon is to the right of Venus on the morning of the 20th.  The next morning, it has passed Venus and has 65 hours to go till New.

In our picture, the narrowing (“decrescent”) Moon is shown at twice its real size.  The little disk of Venus (at 150 times true size), by contrast, is gibbous (becoming fatter) but also becoming gradually smaller, because the planet is on its long journey around to where it will be “full,” at superior conjunction behind the Sun early next year (January 9).

 

One thought on “The sky scene, June 20 morning”

  1. We have had cloudy, murky, typically June weather here in Virginia for the last week or so, meaning I have not been able to get a nice view of the Moon passing by Venus. But on the occasion of the solstice, of which I suppose Guy will have an interesting post very soon, I wanted to pass along a picture of a neat solstice sundial, shown on the June 21 instance of the APOD:

    https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/

    It spells out the word SOLSTICE on two days of the year!

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