Sighting in the Sky

[krpalmer]

Having to leave for work in the faintest premonition of daylight these days does mean I’ve been spotting a waning crescent moon and a bright point of light I’ve been supposing to be Venus. That reminded me I’d managed to see a Universe Today post about a conjunction, and as I tried to sort out if I’d already missed it I kept reminding myself the moon would move through the sky towards the dawn horizon faster than Venus would move in any direction. This morning, I was able to spot the two of them quite close together. “The moon can be covered by the end of your little finger at arm’s length” has been in my mind for some time; today, I could hide both that way. I did notice them fading into the dawn just over the course of my twenty-minute drive to work. Conscious that my general interest in space doesn’t often extend to stargazing, I was pleased to see the conjunction myself. However, I did follow up on the post and see there should have been a star nearby, which I didn’t look hard enough to notice.