Embraced by Sunlight
Even though Venus (left) was the brightest planet in the sky it was less than 1/30th the apparent size of the Moon on January 29. But as both rose before the Sun they shared a crescent phase, and for a moment their visible disks were each about 12 percent illuminated as they stood above the southeastern horizon. The similar sunlit crescents were captured in these two separate images . Made at different magnifications, each panel is a composite of stacked video frames taken with a small telescope. Venus goes through a range of phases like the Moon as the inner planet wanders from evening sky to morning sky and back again with a period of 584 days. Of course the Moon completes its own cycle of phases, a full lunation, in about 29.5 days .