Venus Occultation Tomorrow

Hi guys,
There is a special astronomical event tomorrow named venus occultation which means Venus will go behind the moon. Venus is very bright these days appearing -4.4 in magnitude and it is in a waxing crescent phase showing 44% illuminated, whereas moon will be 3 days old appearing a 15% crescent. So spotting Venus is easier than the moon on 18th. Let's hope that we get clear skies at least for the east sky for watching the beautiful event.

On 18th June night around 21h 37m 46s Venus Occultation will start for Mumbai region. It would take the Moon almost a minute to cover Venus completely. Angular size of Venus will be 26.41 arc seconds. However since only half of Venus is what we can see the event would be over in less then a minute. Venus will not reappear for Mumbai as it will set before reappearance, but some cities in India can see the reappearance very close to the horizon. Venus will disappear from the darker side of Moon.

Something interesting that observers with sensitive video cameras and telescopes might do is to see if the dark side of Venus can be seen at all just after the bright part of the planet disappears behind the Earthlit dark side of the Moon. Some observers have claimed to have seen a faint "ashen light" on the dark side of Venus [which has no moon to illuminate the dark side, like Earth has], but this has not been confirmed. A good video tape could answer and prove the "ashen light", or show that it may be just some sort of optical illusion.

For disappearence times for other cities visit:
http://www.iucaa.ernet.in/~scipop/Sky/venus_occultation.htm