Morning vs. Evening

The planet Venus is climbing higher into the morning sky day by day. It’ll reign as the “morning star” until summer, when it passes behind the Sun. It’ll return to view as the evening star in the fall. Just about every major culture figured out that the morning star and evening star are really a single object. The people of Sumeria probably knew it as far back as 5,000 years ago. But that didn’t stop people from giving the two apparitions different names. In ancient Greece, morning Venus was known as Phosphorous – “bringer of light.” Evening Venus was Hesperos. They originally were thought of as separate bodies, but the names were kept even after Venus’s true nature was discovered. In Rome, morning and evening were Lucifer and Vesper. And in China, the morning star was sometimes called The Great White, while the evening star was The Excellent Western One. Venus commutes between morning and evening because of the relative orbits of Venus and Earth. Venus spends eight or nine months in the morning sky, then disappears behind the Sun for about three months. Then it’s eight or nine months in the evening sky. It then disappears for a few days as it crosses between Earth and the Sun – starting the cycle all over again. Watch for Venus as it climbs higher into the sky over the next couple of months. Right now, it’s quite close to the star Spica. But it’ll pull away from the star over the coming days.   Script by Damond Benningfield