APOD: Venus and the Pleiades in April (2020 Apr 02)

[APOD Robot]

Venus and the Pleiades in April

Explanation: Venus is currently the brilliant evening star. Shared around world, in tonight's sky Venus will begin to wander across the face of the lovely Pleiades star cluster. This digital sky map illustrates the path of the inner planet as the beautiful conjunction evolves, showing its position on the sky over the next few days. The field of view shown is appropriate for binocular equipped skygazers but the star cluster and planet are easily seen with the naked-eye. As viewed from our fair planet, Venus passed in front of the stars of the Seven Sisters 8 years ago, and will again 8 years hence. In fact, orbiting the Sun 13 Venus years are almost equal to 8 years on planet Earth. So we can expect our sister planet to visit nearly the same place in our sky every 8 years.

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[bystander]

The Pleiades Embrace Venus
Sky & Telescope | 2020 Apr 01

[GeoXXX]

“ In fact, orbiting the Sun 13 Venus years are almost equal to 8 years on planet Earth. So we can expect our sister planet to visit nearly the same place in our sky every 8 years.”

Or about every 13 Venus days!

Eric

[Holger Nielsen]

To the upper left one can see six regularly placed dots. I have tried to simulate the view with Starry Night software, but nothing showed up. What could it be?
Holger

[heehaw]

The Pleiades are gearing up, for this frightening invasion by a planet! All stars on deck! (Oops, that was yesterday!)

[Eric]

Otto, thanks for the heads-up and the excellent graphic! But here the Pleiades are being invaded by a much smaller interloper as well: the dreaded 21-st-century inappropriate hyphen! "naked eye" does not want a hyphen here, only when used as a compound adjective: "naked-eye observation".

[Chris Peterson]

To the upper left one can see six regularly placed dots. I have tried to simulate the view with Starry Night software, but nothing showed up. What could it be?
Holger

Probably an asteroid or comet in the database of the program used to create the image.

[orin stepanek]

Venus-Pleiades2020-1.jpg

Venus; The temporary sister!

[neufer]

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Venus; The temporary sister!

• King Lear : Act I, scene V

Fool: The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.

KING LEAR: Because they are not eight?

Fool: Yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool.

[wallyware]

I looked at this tonight with a small reflector - it was beautiful. Venus was almost too bright.

[GeoXXXX]

To the upper left one can see six regularly placed dots. I have tried to simulate the view with Starry Night software, but nothing showed up. What could it be?
Holger

Using SkySafari (which I think was used to put this together) I believe it is the plot of the asteroid (578) Happelia which happened to be in the line of sight when stacking the plot of Venus.

(578) Happelia is a 15th magnitude Asteroid appearing in the constellation Taurus. It orbits the sun every 4.6 years at an average distance of 2.8 AU. It is a main belt asteroid which orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.
It is roughly 69 kilometers across.

Eric

[neufer]

To the upper left one can see six regularly placed dots. I have tried to simulate the view with Starry Night software, but nothing showed up. What could it be?

Using SkySafari (which I think was used to put this together) I believe it is the plot of the asteroid (578) Happelia which happened to be in the line of sight when stacking the plot of Venus.

(578) Happelia is a 15th magnitude Asteroid appearing in the constellation Taurus. It orbits the sun every 4.6 years at an average distance of 2.8 AU. It is a main belt asteroid which orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.
It is roughly 69 kilometers across.

_Little Prince_ (1852) by Carl Happel

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(578) Happelia : Discovered 1905 Nov. 1 by M. F. Wolf at Heidelberg.

Named in honor of Carl Happel (1820–1914), painter and great benefactor to the Heidelberg Observatory.

On 24 February 2017 a possible small 3-kilometer moon was found orbiting the asteroid, based on occultation observations.

The Bruce double astrograph named after Catherine Wolfe Bruce

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<<Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory (German: Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl) is a historic astronomical observatory located near the summit of the Königstuhl hill in the city of Heidelberg in Germany. The predecessor of the current observatory was originally opened in 1774 in the nearby city of Mannheim but degradation of observational conditions there resulted in a relocation to the Königstuhl in 1898.

The main field of activity of the observatory was the investigation of nebulae and the search for asteroids. Max Wolf, his staff and his successors discovered over 800 asteroids, including the first trojan asteroid Achilles in 1906. Between 1912 and 1957 Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth discovered almost 400 asteroids from the Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory.>>