Venus near Porrima

Event Date: November 3rd

Time: 7:00 AM

Brief

   This is the final morning before daylight savings ends.  As a result, it is the last post-7:00 Sunrise until early winter, when our days are short enough that it takes a little after the top of the hour to see our star clearing the horizon.  While we still have enough darkness at 7 this morning, take a look at Venus still high above the horizon and not far from a neat double star: Porrima [Gamma Virginis].  Venus will not get extremely close to this 3rd magnitude star, yet close enough that we see the two as a fine pair a few days from now.  Before talking more about Porrima, here it is near Venus: 3.2º separated, zoomed out a little south of east.

Detailed

   At 13 arc-seconds and waxing to 81% this morning, Venus' angular size is less than 1/4 of what it was during inferior conjunction: about 1 arc-minute then.  As for Porrima, it has a companion that moves enough that moves quickly around it.  Find out more about that here, logged last year by the Urban Astronomer (a fellow Blogspotter).  As mentioned there, the 170 year-period that the two stars revolve around each other means that at times, we cannot see the companion easily unless a powerful telescope is used.  Other times, we see the companion through a small telescope, when separated enough.  Take a look at the star, and find out what type of telescope you need.  Remember that increasing the magnification with a small telescope when they are very close doesn't guarantee improving seeing the separation.  Instead, a telescope with more light gathering capability has better resolution, gives that opportunity to zoom and easily see the separation.

   This second link shows a photo of the two together, which the software will not let me do.  What the software does let me do, is show a binocular view of Porrima and Venus within a 5º field.  

click on images to enlarge: courtesy of Starry Night Pro Plus, version 6.4.3, by Simulation Curriculum Corp.

This will not be enough to see the phase of Venus, yet when using real binoculars, we may barely detect the gibbous phase, with low magnification.