Crescent Venus

Have you ever seen planet Venus in its crescent phase? As photographed in this early morning view above Sweden when the planet is near its largest apparent size (closest to the Earth) it appears as a thin crescent close to the position of the sun in our sky. The crescent can be easily seen even through a small binocular. Venus disc can be small as only 10 arc seconds when its at full phase but its apparent diameter enlarges 6 times to about one arc minute (the Moon is about 30 arc minutes wide) when it is a thin crescent. The phases of the planet Venus are the different variations of lighting seen on the planet’s surface, similar to lunar phases. The first recorded observations of them were telescopic observations by Galileo in 1610. However the extreme crescent phase of Venus has been observed today with the naked eye but there are no confirmed pre-telescopic records of it in the history.