NOTES ON VENUS — CAMERON. 393 



thing, and it may therefore be not amiss to say a few words 

 about it. 



The opportunity for seeing Venus as morning star while she 

 is still both really and technically an evening star can only occur 

 near inferior conjunction. And only then, — to observers in the 

 northei'n hemisphere, — when her declination is considerably 

 north of the sun's. 



Near conj^^nction, Venus and the sun pass tlie meridian at 

 nearly the same hour, and of course, this hour is for each of them 

 xittlf-way between the hours of rising and setting. When Venus 

 is north of the sun she is above our horizon for a longer time than 

 he is, and the extra time is divided equally between the two 

 halves of her daily course, the one before meridian passage and 

 the one after. If these two sentences are fully understood, it 

 will be obvious that when the two conditions occur toofether 

 Venus will both rise earlier and set later than the sun. 



She did so this year, in the latitude of Yarmouth, on the 

 twelve days following February 6th. During the first three or 

 four of these days the interval between her rising and sunrise 

 was too short to let one get a sight of her, and the same is true 

 of the interval between sunset and her setting on the last three 

 or four days. And the weather was bad then too ; in fact, it 

 was bad observing weather during the whole twelve days, except 

 only from about sunset on the 13th until the forenoon of the 

 14th. Luckily this just covered the time when the astronomical 

 conditions were most favorable for both the evening and the 

 morning observations. On the evening of the 13th, Venus 

 stayed with us fortj' minutes after sunset, and she was up next 

 morning nearly as long before sunrise. 



It has already been mentioned that the evening observation 

 was easy. It was also unpremeditated and unprepared for. The 

 weather had been so bad for so long that the observing habit 

 had slipped off. An accidental look out — a gap seen in the clouds 

 near where Venus should be — a few seconds' search, first with 

 glass and then with eye, that was all. But such happy-go- 

 lucky methods could not be trusted to for the morning observa- 

 tion. It was long since an observation of any kind had been 



