I tried googling this, but I couldn’t understand what it meant, so can anyone here help me out?
In: Physics
The Sun has a radius 120 times larger than Venus.
The Sun emits a humongous amount of light, Venus only reflects some of the sunlight that falls on it.
Venus is only sometimes closer to the Earth than the Sun, sometimes it is farther away. But it’s mostly the first two.
First of all, you can see Venus, it’s rather easy to observe at dawn and dusk.
The reason why you see the Sun it because it’s far much bigger (so its apparent diameter seen from Earth is far larger even if it’s at a longer distance) and far much brighter (since the planets only reflect the light of the Sun).
Venus is the brightest planet in the night sky. It’s the third brightest object in the sky, after the Sun and Moon. That’s why it’s called the Evening Star. And every other planet is visible in the night sky, depending on where they’re at in relation to the Earth. Earlier this month, all of the other seven planets were observable at the same time, with five of them viewable with the naked eye.
You can see Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn with your naked eye. Jupiter and Saturn are always farther away from us them the sun.
I suspect Mars and perhaps Venus can be visible when they are farther than the sun from us but I am not sure.
The requirement for us to see them that they are up in the sky for us during the night.
The planet does not emit light by itself but only reflect sunlight. Because of their distance from the sun and us and their size, they will be a lot less bright than the sun.
Out atmosphere scatters sunlight so the sky is blue during the day. For us to see something in the sky it is to be brighter than the sky. It is only the moon that is brighter than the sky so it can be visible during the day. The planers in the solar system simply are to dim to see.
There have been supernova and even reflection from satellites that was visible during the day but nothing except that moon and of course the sun in a normal situation.
You can compare it if it is dark outside and you look at a window. If you have a lamp on the inside some light is reflected in the window. You can still see a very bright light through the window but not a dim light.
When you turn off the lamp indoors you can see a lot of dimmer light outside.
You cant see Uranus or Neptunus with you make eye because they are too dim. Just like as you can’t see a cable very far away even if there is nothing between you and it.
The sun is very huge, and venus is way smaller. We can sometimes see venus as a speck if it’s in the right place and being illuminated by the sun well enough, but the sun is way more obvious because it is simply so big.
It’s like how you can see a big jet plane thousands of metres up in the sky, but you can’t see insects a few hundred meters up in the sky. The insects are way closer just like venus, but also way smaller.
The diameter of venus is 12,104 km. The diameter of the sun is 1.3927 million km.
Also, planets don’t give off light from nuclear fusion, they just reflect some of it so they’re duller.
The Sun is bright, insanely bright, and since the atmosphere scatters light it effectively glows during the day and keeps you from seeing dim things.
The way we measure how bright something appears from Earth is with Apparent Magnitude, a change of 5 is 100x change in brightness. The star Vega is the 0 reference, the asteroid Vesta at its brightest is +5.2 or about 100x dimmer while Venus at it brightest is -4.92 or about 100x brighter than Vega but usually its closer to -3. The Sun meanwhile is coming in at -26.7 or over 100,000,000x brighter than Venus at its brightest. That’s a bit inconvenient for observations…
The dimmest thing you can see during daytime is -4 so you could be able to see Venus at its brightest, except that’s when it is *right* next to the Sun and about to dip behind it so you can generally only see Venus right around dawn and dusk when the sky is dim enough and during periods when Venus is at a better angle from the sun for us. Only being able to see Venus near dawn and dusk is why it was called the Morning Star. If you ever see a star in the morning and go “wow that’s stupid bright!” that’s Venus.
The Sun is a huge glowing ball which when you consider the distance it is away is the same relative size as the Moon, at night you can see the light of the Sun bouncing off Venus letting it glow like a star low down near the horizon. Planets don’t produce their own light they require the light of the Sun to be reflected off them for us to see them.
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