122 THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
starry host, she is without comparison the most magnificent star in 
the sky. 
To those who consult their almanacs the movements of Venus 
are well known, but most people discover the planet while admiring 
a beautiful sunset. Venus has not been thought of for months until 
she is seen just above the horizon. For week after week she rises 
higher and brighter in the western sky, until she attains to full bril- 
liancy. After weeks of brilliancy the height of Venus at sunset 
lessens, its brightness diminishes, and it sinks again below the hor- 
izon to become once more a morning star. When Venus is at its 
greatest brilliancy it is between forty and sixty times more brilliant 
than any other object in the stellar sky, and yet at the time of its 
greatest brilliancy we see actually less of the planet than at other 
times. To the ordinary observer at such times it seems hard to 
believe that Venus is a dark body like the earth, and is only reflect- 
ing the light of the Sun. In her course around the Sun she presents 
to us all the phases of the Moon. 
When Venus occupies the region of its orbit behind the Sun, 
with reference to us, this is called the point of her superior con- 
junction ; it is then at its greatest distance from the earth, and 
comes almost imperceptibly towards us till it reaches its quadrature, 
then it is at its mean distance ; here it presents the aspect of a half- 
moon. It attains its most brilliant light at the epoch when it shines 
at a distance of thirty-nine degrees from the Sun, and shows the 
third phase sixty-nine days before its inferior conjunction. Finally 
when it reaches the region of its orbit nearest the earth it shows us 
nothing more than an exceedingly thin crescent. Since it is then 
between us and the Sun, and presents to us its dark hemisphere, 
sometimes it passes directly between us and the Sun and appears a 
little larger, about 63 to 64 seconds of arc, but it is then an abso- 
lutely black disc, and is no longer, ordinarly speaking, a star. The 
phases of Venus were first seen by Galileo towards the end of 1610, 
and the discovery of these phases overthrew one of the first objec- 
tions which were raised against the system of Copernicus. Venus 
is frequently visible in full daylight in astronomical instruments, 
even at the moment of its superior conjunction. It is then round 
and quite small. 
It has been noticed by those who make a close study of Venus, 
