Planet Venus

Welcome to Planet Venus
A website about the planet Venus

Venus is the second planet in our solar system. Named for the goddess of love, Venus is frequently placed as the morning or evening star.

Being an inner planet, that is within Earth orbit, it never appears very far away from the Sun, so learning when the optimal times when Venus is furthest away from the Sun, it ket to observing Venus. In this website we calculate those times known as "Elongations."

Today in Astronomy History
courtesy of astroplanet.info

August 21, 1560
Tycho Brahe becomes interested in astronomy.

August 21, 1665
French-Italian astronomer and mathematician, Giacomo Filippo Maraldi, is born. Giacomo Maraldi figured out that the corona seen during a solar eclipse belonged to the Sun and not the Moon.

August 21, 1972
US orbiting astronomy observatory Copernicus is launched.

August 21, 1995
American astrophysicist, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, dies. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar with William A.Fowler won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics for formulating the theory on the later evolutionary stages of massive stars.