seeing bright star on the horizon ! Night flight to _________

Are you a ‘Star Gazer’ – did you notice a bright Star much below the Crescent moon ?  I noticed one while taking a picture of Moon from Kaladipet yesterday. 

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome aboard the starship Boney M

for our first passenger flight to _____.

Ready for count-down: 10, 9,8, 7,6, 5,4, 3,2, 1 - ignition - lift off

Nightflight to _____

Way out there in space

Nightflight to _______

Our new fav'right place

 

Could you name  that bright star by the waxing moon ? It’s not a star. It’s the brightest planet, Venus. We are able to see some planets, some starts coming closer to moon at times.   There are elliptical paths    traveled by the sun, moon and planets. From the northern hemisphere, the ecliptic is slanting more steeply each evening, and the steeper the angle of the ecliptic, the more magnificent the view of the moon and Venus.

 

Venus is the second planet from the Sun, and the sixth largest planet. It’s the hottest planet in our solar system.

 

வெள்ளி (Venus) சூரியக்குடும்பத்தில் சூரியனிலிருந்து இரண்டாவதாக அமைந்துள்ள ஒரு கோள்.. நம் இரவு வானத்தில் நிலவுக்கு அடுத்து வெள்ளியே ஒளி மிகுந்தது.  சூரியனின் உதயத்துக்கு முன்னும், மறைவிற்குப் பின்னும் வெள்ளி தன் உச்ச ஒளிநிலையை அடைகிறது. எனவே இது காலை நட்சத்திரம், விடிவெள்ளி மற்றும் மாலை நட்சத்திரம் என்றெல்லாம் அழைக்கப்படுகின்றது. சூரியக் குடும்பத்திலே மிகவும் வெப்பமான வளிமண்டலத்தைக் கொண்ட கோள் வெள்ளியாகும். 

Venus is a cloud-swaddled planet named for a love goddess, and often called Earth’s twin. But pull up a bit closer, Venus turns hellish. Our nearest planetary neighbor, the second planet from the Sun, has a surface hot enough to melt lead. The atmosphere is so thick that, from the surface, the Sun is just a smear of light. Venus is similar in structure and size to Earth, and is sometimes called Earth's evil twin. Its thick atmosphere traps heat in a runaway greenhouse effect, making it the hottest planet in our solar system with surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead. Below the dense, persistent clouds, the surface has volcanoes and deformed mountains. 

Earth’s brightest planet – is shining in the western twilight after sunset. It’ll remain visible in the evening sky through the rest of this year. Greatest elongation – when Venus will be farthest from the sunset – will come on January 9-10, 2025. You can’t miss Venus! It’s exceedingly bright and will penetrate the bright twilight. The thick waxing crescent moon will move away from Venus after sunset on December 6. Venus will reach its greatest distance from the sun in January 2025.   

Internally, Venus has a core, mantle, and crust. Venus lacks an internal dynamo, and its weakly induced magnetosphere is caused by atmospheric interactions with the solar wind. Internal heat escapes through active volcanism, resulting in resurfacing instead of plate tectonics. Venus is one of two planets in the Solar System, the other being Mercury, that have no moons. Conditions perhaps favourable for life on Venus have been identified at its cloud layers. Venus may have had liquid surface water early in its history with a habitable environment, before a runaway greenhouse effect evaporated any water and turned Venus into its present state. 

Venus takes 224.7 Earth days to complete an orbit around the Sun, and a Venusian solar year is just under two Venusian days long. The orbits of Venus and Earth are the closest between any two Solar System planets, approaching each other in synodic periods of 1.6 years. Venus and Earth have the lowest difference in gravitational potential of any pair of Solar System planets. This allows Venus to be the most accessible destination and a useful gravity assist waypoint for interplanetary flights from Earth.

 

Venus figures prominently in human culture and in the history of astronomy. Orbiting inferiorly (inside of Earth's orbit), it always appears close to the Sun in Earth's sky, as either a "morning star" or an "evening star". While this is also true for Mercury, Venus appears more prominent, since it is the third brightest object in Earth's sky after the Moon and the Sun.

 

The words in 2^nd para are the lyrics of a famous Album released in 1978 by Boney M.  Nightflight to Venus is the third studio album by Euro-Caribbean group Boney M., and became a major success in continental Europe, Scandinavia, and Canada, topping most of the album charts during the second half of 1978 and also became their first UK number one album. In Canada, it received a nomination for a 1980 Juno Award in a category 'International Album of the Year'. Nightflight to Venus includes the worldwide hits "Rivers of Babylon" and "Brown Girl in the Ring", a double A-sided single that topped the UK singles chart and has sold over 2 million copies there.  The follow-up was another Boney M. classic, "Rasputin”.

 
Interesting !
 
Regards – S Sampathkumar
6.12.2024