On Friday Jan 30, 09 we are presented with a nice opportunity to catch Venus in broad day light.
On this day the Moon and Venus would be rising almost together. At about 10:00 a.m. if the sky is clear it should not be difficult to see the brightening lunar crescent well above the eastern horizon. Venus would be about two and quarter degrees south of the Moon. If one uses a small pair of binoculars one should be able to see these in the same field of view.
The best opportunity, however, comes when they will be crossing the meridian, an imaginary arc that passes through the north pole, the point right overhead and then the south pole. Close to the time is crosses the meridian (called transit time) time face due south and look strait up and then bend your neck down slightly southwards. You should be able to spot the Moon and then continue further down a bit and you can spot Venus.
Venus Rise, Transit and set times (in IST) for some cities in India are
rise transit set
Chennai 9h 01m 15h 12m 21h 26m
Bangalore 9h 25m 15h 27m 21h 28m
Jaipur 9h 32m 15h 34m 21h 36m
Kolkata 8h 42m 14h 44m 20h 46m
Mumbai 9h 44m 15h 46m 21h 47m
New Delhi 9h 26m 15h 28m 21h 30m
Pune 9h 39m 15h 41m 21h 43m
If you missed the event, never mind. Wait till it gets dark. It would be a magnificent view of the Moon and Venus next to each other above the western horizon.
Annular Solar Eclipse of January 26
The first solar eclipse of 2009 occurs at the Moon's ascending node in western Capricornus. An annular eclipse will be visible from a wide track that traverses the Indian Ocean and western Indonesia. A partial eclipse will be seen within the much larger path of the Moon's penumbral shadow, which includes the southern third of Africa, Madagascar, Australia except Tasmania, southeast India, Southeast Asia and Indonesia. (Figure 1).
The annular path begins in the South Atlantic at 06:06 UT when the Moon's antumbral shadow meets Earth and forms a 363 kilometre wide corridor. Traveling eastward, the shadow quickly sweeps south of the African continent, missing it by approximately 900 kilometres. Slowly curving to the northeast the path crosses the southern Indian Ocean. Greatest eclipse[1] takes place at 07:58:39 UT when the eclipse magnitude[2] will reach 0.9282. At this instant, the annular duration is 7 minutes 54 seconds, the path width is 280 kilometres and the Sun is 73° above the flat horizon formed by the open ocean. The central track continues northeast where it finally encounters land in the form of the Cocos Islands and onward to southern Sumatra and western Java (Figure 2). At 09:40 UT, the central line duration is 6 minutes 18 seconds and the Sun's altitude at 25°. In its final minutes, the antumbral shadow cuts across central Borneo and clips the northwestern edge of Celebes before ending just short of Mindanao, Philippines at 09:52 UT. During a 3 hour 46 minute trajectory across our planet, the Moon's antumbra travels approximately 14,500 kilometres and covers 0.9% of Earth's surface area. Path coordinates and central line circumstances are presented in Table 1.
Partial phases of the eclipse are visible primarily from southern Africa, Australia, Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Local circumstances for a number of cities are listed in Table 2. All times are given in Universal Time. The Sun's altitude and azimuth, the eclipse magnitude and obscuration[3] are all given at the instant of maximum eclipse.
This is the 50th eclipse of Saros 131. The family began with an unusually long series of 22 partial eclipses starting on 1125 Aug 01. The first central eclipse was total in the Northern Hemisphere on 1522 Mar 27. It was followed by 5 more total eclipses before the series produce 5 hybrid eclipses from 1630 to 1702. The first annular eclipse of Saros 131 occurred on 1720 Aug 04. The series will produce 29 more annular eclipses the last of which is 2243 Jun 18. Saros 131 terminates on 2369 Sep 02 after a string of 7 partial eclipses. Complete details for 70 eclipses in the series may be found at:
