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If you ’re willing to get up early this Thursday ( Nov. 9 ) , you may catch one of the most delightful celestial sights of the year : the crescent moonlight " smiling " at Venus .
During this close conjunction , themoon , arguably in its most delicate and beautiful stage of the month , will appear close to a very bright Venus but will be orient so it resembles a smiley look .
Venus and the crescent moon will be in conjunction early on Thursday, Nov. 9.
However , you ’ll have to arise betimes ; it will be seeable in the eastern sky start up at about 3 a.m. across North America . There will be around a two - hour windowpane to see the moonshine and Venus before sunup , with the pair climb higher into the east - southeasterly predawn sky .
The moon , in its wane crescent phase , will be just 15 % lit during the event . Just 1 arcdegree — about the width of an outstretched digit — to its upper right will be Venus , shine at a brilliant magnitude of -4.3 . ( blue order of magnitude are bright . ) These , the 2d and third brightest objects in the sky after the Lord’s Day , will be easy to see with the naked oculus , though a pair ofgood binocularswill let on details on the lunar surface .
The duette will be so close that they ’ll fit in the same field of opinion in asmall telescope , grant to Live Science ’s sis siteSpace.com .
You ’ll probably discover that the lightless portion of the moon — in this face , the other 85 % — is also slightly illuminated . That ’s " Earthshine , " the Sunday ’s light reflected off Earth ’s clouds and trash ceiling back onto the moonlight , which part illuminates its night side .
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For North America , this brilliant meet - up is plant to be merely a lovely conjunction . However , from a narrow-minded route across some of the planet , it will be possible to see Venus shortly disappear behind the lunation . That so - telephone occultation is possible because the lunation is so skinny to Earth that its view in the sky vary by up to 2 degrees worldwide , according toIn-the-sky.org .
The path of profile for the occultation will dwell across parts of Greenland , Iceland , Svalbard ( Norway ) , Europe ( not let in Spain and Portugal ) , westerly Russia and key northern Africa . However , for some observers , the occultation will occur during daylight , so viewers there will necessitate a telescope to see this game of celestial skin - and - seek .
