by Akkana Peck
I didn't think to post an alert about today's Venus occultation. Too bad -- it was very pretty, both disappearance and reappearance. I watched the disappearance from home, then brought my 80mm f/7 refractor in to work to do a little sidewalk astronomy. Northern CA weather actually obliged, and all the clouds we've had for the past few days went away to give a beautiful clear sky.
It took amazingly little time for Venus to disappear and reappear -- less than 15 seconds. (I didn't get an accurate timing because I was too busy looking to set the stopwatch immediately. :-)
Right now Venus is very obviously visible to the naked eye, hanging just off the dark limb of the moon. If you missed the occultation, and even if you're at work or somewhere else without optics, go outside and take a look anyway! (Assuming you're in a part of the world where the moon is visible right now, of course.) I got good crowds for my impromptu star party here at work, and everyone was able to see Venus naked-eye once they knew what to look for.
A coworker who is also an amateur astronomer had a wonderful description of the naked eye view after reappearance for someone who was trying to see it: "If the moon is a parachute, Venus is the parachutist."
There will be another daytime occultation next month: Jupiter, on August 15. That should be a much slower event, with Jupiter taking as long as a minute to disappear and reappear. I'd like to try to see the Galilean moons, but I don't expect that's likely in full daylight.