Planets usually shine steadily. But bright Venus is twinkling now – shining in multiple colors – because it’s so low in the sky. Photo taken on March 24, 2017 – the evening before inferior conjunction – with Venus only 8.4° away from the sun. Photo by Helio C. Vital.
Helio C. Vital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil wrote:
Earth’s multilayered and mostly turbulent atmosphere acts like a dynamic set of moving lenses and prisms that play with the light from the pointlike stars, causing their apparent brightness, color and even position to fluctuate or twinkle. This effect is called scintillation. It’s usually negligible for planets because the multiple beams of light we receive from their disks tend to cancel out the effect. However, the current situation of Venus is indeed quite interesting due to the fact that although the diameter of the planet has reached the impressive figure of 1 arcminute, its crescent is currently only 1% illuminated and thus it is extremely thin.
As a consequence, in recent days, Venus has been very strongly affected by scintillation.
As I was analyzing some photos of Venus I had just taken with a Canon Rebel T1i attached to a C8 (Cassegrain focus), I noticed that, as I further reduced the brightness of the images and intensified their contrasts, the crescent became segmented into a multitude of sections with colors that grew increasingly more vivid.
Our Editor-in-Chief Deborah Byrd works to keep all the astronomy balls in the air between EarthSky's website, YouTube page and social media platforms. She's the primary editor of our popular daily newsletter and a frequent host of EarthSky livestreams. Deborah created the EarthSky radio series in 1991 and founded EarthSky.org in 1994. Prior to that, she had worked for the University of Texas McDonald Observatory since 1976, and created and produced their Star Date radio series. She has won a galaxy of awards from the broadcasting and science communities, including having an asteroid named 3505 Byrd in her honor. In 2020, she won the Education Prize from the American Astronomical Society, the largest organization of professional astronomers in North America. A science communicator and educator since 1976, Byrd believes in science as a force for good in the world and a vital tool for the 21st century. "Being an EarthSky editor is like hosting a big global party for cool nature-lovers," she says.
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