The climax of the brightest planet’s performance in the evening sky this year, as described in the Venus pages of Astronomical Calendar 2026, and in our book about Venus, planet and goddess.
This is the scene for an American location after the Sun has gone down and Venus and the slender crescent Moon are still in view.
See the end note about enlarging illustrations. An arrow through a moving body shows its movement (against the starry background) from 2 days earlier to 2 days later. Venus is exaggerated 150 times in size, to show its crescent shape. The Sun is exaggerated 2 times in size. The Moon is exaggerated 4 times in size.£ It is shown at its apparent position for the location on Earth, displaced by parallax; the arrows are along its path as seen from the center of the Earth.
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format. You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor.
One way: right-click, and choose ”View image” or ”Open image in new tab”, then enlarge. Or choose ”Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it. On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers). Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.
Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after publishing it. If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version. Or, if you click ‘Refresh’ or press function key 5, you’ll see the version change to the latest.