Does anyone remember whenVenus was close to the earth and for two days it looked like their were two moons?

Question

Not Mars - Venus in 1974 or 1975

I was in Scotland at the time; so maybe a better view up there?

It did happen - I saw it! But would like a picture or newspaper article.

Answer 1

What year was this please ? I could hazzard a guess but I don't wanna look stupid if what I recall is wrong. I sort of remember it and remember the news articles too. However I don't have any vivid memory of the visual sight of the event (unfortunately). Sounds cool.

I'm sat here waiting to see the total eclipse with rest of my family. 8 more minutes and it enters the umbra stage of the eclipse.

Answer 2

As the above poster has said, this has never happened. Venus can never be close enough to Earth to appear as more than a bright star. At closest approach, it is to close to the sun in the sky to be visible anyway.

The mars e-mail hoax was really an edited re-send of something that went around in 2003. The 2003 version was correct. The Mars opposition in 2003 was the closest Mars has been to Earth in a good long time. The email stated something to the effect of "Mars will appear to be the size of the moon in a telescope of a modest 70 power." When the e-mail was recirculated in hoax form, the "in a telescope..." part was taken out, which basically made the email say that Mars would be as big as the moon in the sky. This could never happen either.

Answer 3

I think you may mean Mars not Venus.

I think that you may be regurgitating the hoax e-mail that circulated last summer suggesting Mars would be at its closest to Earth in 60,000 years on August 27 2006 and would look as big as the moon when it did,

This rumour was incorrect,

(a) There was such a close approach on August 27 2003 i.e. 3 years earlier (36 million miles),

(b) On August 27 2006 Mars was on the far side of the Sun, well over 200 million miles away and invisible from Earth because of the Sun's glare. (So no wonder nobody saw it!)

(c) Mars' diameter is twice that of the Moon. The moon is less than a quarter of a million miles away and Mars was 36 million miles i.e, twice the size at 144 times the distance,

No way could it appear as large, nor as bright, The moon is -12.7 and Mars -2.9 in magnitude (5 magnitudes difference would mean 100 times difference in brightness so 10 magnitudes difference would mean 10,000 times difference in brightness).

So the whole thing was, and is preposterous and simply plays on people's gullibility and their understandable desire that their children should see a once-in-a-lifetime event.

The only objects that have two moons in this solar system are Mars (Phobos and Deimos), the asteroid 87 Sylvia (Romulus and Remus) and the KBO nicknamed Santa Claus whose larger moon is nicknamed Rudolph.

The reason that nobody remembers seeing Mars as big as the moon is that it did not happen!

ADDENDUM
(having read your additional details)

At its brightest Venus is -4.6 magnitude and thus the full moon would be about 1,650 as bright as Venus.

When Venus lies between the Earth and the Sun, a position known as 'inferior conjunction', it makes the closest approach to Earth of any planet, lying at a distance of about 40 million km. The planet reaches inferior conjunction every 584 days, on average.

As it moves around its orbit, Venus displays phases like those of the Moon (Galileo studied these in 1610): it is new when it passes between the Earth and the Sun, full when it is on the opposite side of the Sun, and a crescent when it is at its maximum elongations from the Sun.

Venus is brightest when it is a thin crescent; it is much closer to Earth when a thin crescent than when gibbous, or full.

As 8 kilometres = 5 miles, Venus when at its closest would be 24 million miles away, two-thirds the distance of Mars at its closest. But that is still 96 times as far away as the moon.

Answer 4

To be fair to Joanna B, she is not saying that the two moons looked the same size as one another, merely that it looked like there were two moons. We shouldn't put the hoaxers' words into her mouth.

Moons can vary enormously in size: Jupiter's largest moons, Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa, would seriously outshine and outsize any of the 59 non-Galilean moons of Jupiter that appeared next to one of them in the Jovian skies.

So whilst we cannot deny Joanna saw what looked like two moons to her, all those many moons ago, what I think the last two posters have adequately demonstrated is that they cannot have been comparable in either the arc presented to the eye or in brightness.

Not two peas in a pod but more like a water melon under brilliant spotlights and a pea lit by a hand-held torch?

Answer 5

I remember it, they kept talking about it on the TV and I went out every night and looked and looked and I never did get to see it. Where was it, I asked everyone and nobody knew where to look for it. I don't believe it existed at all, they just wanted people to get out of the house and get some fresh air.

Answer 6

It could never happen. Venus is so far away it will always look small. It can be very bright though.

Answer 7

This could never happen. Venus never looks like more than a really bright star. It doesn't even look like a disk.

Answer 8

looked pretty good with binoculars, just like a small moon........... oh yes it does........... and it doesn't flicker like a star. Get the binoculars out and see for yourselves !

Answer 9

im ancient but dont remember that

Answer 10

Nope. When did that happen???