Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Thursday, January 10th.  The sun will rise at 8:17.  It’ll be up for 9 hours and 4 minutes, setting at 5:22.   The moon, 1 day before new, will rise at 7:48 tomorrow morning.

This morning the Venus and the thin crescent moon will appear together in the growing twilight.  Venus has been our morning companion since the wonderful transit of Venus last June 5th.  It will stay in the morning sky until it passes behind the sun on March 28th, after which it will slowly emerge into the evening sky once again.  Unlike the transit, it will not pass directly behind the sun.  Venus is inside the earth’s orbit of the sun, so moves faster than the earth.  It’s year is 225 of our days.  However we see Venus from the moving earth, so it takes about a year and 7 months for Venus to move around the sun from our point of view,  So we have about 9 ½ months with Venus as our morning star and 9 ½ months as our evening star.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

A closeup of Venus and the moon at 7:30 a.m. January 10, 2013. Created using Stellarium.