Astrophotos: Venus at Inferior Conjunction

By Nancy Atkinson - January 12, 2014 at 10:40 PM UTC | Planetary Science
ahmad-venus.png

Venus has now gone from being that bright "star" you've been seeing around sunset to later this month being the bright object you'll see in the early morning pre-dawn hours. On January 11, Venus passed between Earth and the Sun in what is known as inferior conjunction. We

challenged our readers

to try and capture it, and Shahrin Ahmad in Malaysia nabbed the tiny crescent Venus about 8 hours before inferior conjunction, in what he said was a personal record!

"Around 12.30 p.m. local noon time, there was a brief of good seeing, and probably the best one so far," Shah said via email. "Suits nicely as a parting shot. After that the sky seeing began to deteriorate really fast!"

Venus was about 0.4% illuminated and 5.1 deg from the Sun.

"Even without stretching the original photo, we can easily see how the crescent has reach beyond 180 degrees around Venus," he said. "This is the closest Venus I've ever imaged."

You can see Shah (and his telescope) on the

Virtual Star Party this week,

talking about his Venus observations.

But take a look at this: here's a great series of images from

Paul Stewart from Timaru, New Zealand:

[caption id="attachment_108072" align="aligncenter" width="580"]

Venus inferior conjunction timeline from January 7 to 13th, missing January 12 due to clouds. Credit and copyright: Paul Stewart. [/caption]

Wow! That's exceptional work! You can see more of Paul's astro-work at his website,

Upside Down Astronomer.

Thanks to both Shah and Paul for sharing their photos!

Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you're giving us permission to post them). Please explain what's in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com