Low in the evening sky, Venus is passing about 1.5° south of Spica, the “ear of wheat” in the hand of harvest-maiden Virgo.
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 magnitudes of Venus and Spica are -4.5 and 1.0, which means, in this logarithmic system used in astronomy, that the planet is at this time sending us about 160 times more light, by reflection from the Sun, than is reaching us from the star, which is about 11 times more massive than our Sun but about 260 light-years away.
If Venus were passing even closer to Spica so that they were to appear as one star, the combined magnitude would be brightened by only 0.01, to -4.51.
Venus is 0.1 magnitude brighter than when it was at easternmost elongation (appearing farthest out from the Sun) on August 15, because swing nearer to us. It will be brightest around September 22.
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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.