The Appearance of Venus Setting over the Pacific Ocean

Photographer: Mila Zinkova Summary Author: Mila Zinkova

In his article titled "An Ancient Venus Portent: Comet or Mirage?" Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs describes some disaster conspiracies that came about from the ancient observation of Venus. Castor of Rhodes, a Greek grammarian and rhetorician, who probably lived about the time of Julius Cesar, once described Venus as "a portent  […] that it changed colour, size, shape, course; which happened neither before nor after in this way."

On October 18, 2024, I witnessed a somewhat similar appearance of Venus while I trying to capture the Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. Venus was setting into the Pacific below the comet, just west of San Francisco, California. I grabbed my camera and began to film it. Sadly, I had no tripod, so Venus was jumping around everywhere in my video. Click here to see it. Even though there's quite a bit of movement, you can still see how it changes color and later in the video, the Novaya Zemlya effect of Venus can be observed. The top photo is a 'still' made from this video.

A simulation of my observations was made by Siebren van der Werf. He describes his simulation as "not necessarily accurate in all details, but in spirit." Click here to see the video of both my observation and the simulation of the Novaya Zemlya. 

On November 7, 2024, I did have a tripod and was able to capture green and blue flashes of the setting Venus (bottom photo). It's interesting to note that some of Venus's flashes appeared as big as Venus itself. 

San Francisco, California Coordinates: 37.7775, -122.416389

Related Links:Novaya Zemlya of the Sun (filmed 1.5 hours before Venus set on October 18, 2024) Video of Venus' blue and green flashes (November 7, 2024) Two Types of Bewildering Sunset MiragesSunset Mock Mirage and Green Flash