Subj : Daily APOD Report
To   : All
From : Alan Ianson
Date : Thu Jan 06 2022 00:17:08

                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                               2022 January 6

                 The Last Days of Venus as the Evening Star
               Image Credit & Copyright: Tamas Ladanyi (TWAN)

   Explanation: That's not a young crescent Moon posing behind cathedral
   towers after sunset. It's Venus in a crescent phase. About 40 million
   kilometers away and about 2 percent illuminated by sunlight, it was
   captured with camera and telephoto lens in this series of exposures as
   it set in western skies on January 1 from Veszprem, Hungary. The bright
   celestial beacon was languishing in the evening twilight, its days as
   the Evening Star coming to a close as 2022 began. But it was also
   growing larger in apparent size and becoming an ever thinner crescent
   in telescopic views. Heading toward a (non-judgemental) inferior
   conjunction, the inner planet will be positioned between Earth and Sun
   on January 9 and generally lost from view in the solar glare. A
   crescent Venus will soon reappear though. Rising in the east by
   mid-month just before the Sun as the brilliant Morning Star.

          Status Updates: Deploying the James Webb Space Telescope
                  Tomorrow's picture: What the penguin saw.
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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