Fuzzy stars peered through a partly cloudy sky as we set out on our morning walk. As the dawn brightened we found a very thin crescent Moon and Venus through a gap in the trees. The Moon seemed to be grinning like the fabled Cheshire Cat while Venus, once considered the goddess of love, gazed impassively in the lower central image.
Though two very different objects, they both show the same series of phases, though a telescope is needed to see the phases of Venus. This led Galileo to conclude that Venus does, in fact, orbit the Sun, not Earth, and, as could be expected of a love goddess, his time with Venus got him into a whole lot of trouble. Maybe that’s why the Cheshire Moon is grinning!
For a story of an adventure with an evening pairing of Venus and the Moon see: https://eskildoodle.com/lucky-me/
#venus #moon #Galileo #telescope
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