Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Tuesday, January 10th.  The sun will rise at 8:18.  It’ll be up for 9 hours and 3 minutes, setting at 5:21.   The moon, 1 day past full, will rise at 7:18 this evening.

Venus is getting brighter and is appearing higher in the southwest after sunset.  This is our sister planet of the earth in size only.  It is now nearly 115 million miles away, but it is getting closer.  Venus is in an orbit inside the earth’s and is currently 67 million miles from the sun.  It orbits the sun in 225 days, compared to earth’s 365 days.  Right now Venus appears as a small gibbous orb.  On March 27th it will appear at its greatest separation from the sun.  It then will appear as half illuminated.  Thereafter as it gets closer to the earth Venus will grow in size as its crescent gets thinner and thinner.  When Venus passes between the earth and sun on the evening of June 5th, it will pass directly in front of the sun, an extremely rare event.

* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of  Michigan.