Venus with Crescent Moon

Waxing crescent moon with Venus near maximum brightness, photo taken 20250202 by David Bookstaber

Now in the first week of February 2025, Venus is approaching its peak brightness. Here is a picture of it near the waxing crescent moon while at a brightness magnitude of -4.8.

This makes it 23 times as bright as Mars, which had a magnitude of -1.4 in the photos following its lunar eclipse three weeks ago:

Mars emerges from lunar occultation, photo by David Bookstaber 20250113

Venus has almost twice the diameter of Mars (which itself has twice the diameter of the moon), and presently it is also only 75% as far from Earth as is Mars.

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