[27] Chambers, in his ‘Descriptive Astronomy,’ 4th edition, 1889, devotes a chapter to the discussion of facts having reference to Vulcan; and the reader desiring full information will find it here.
Beauty of Venus.—Brilliancy.—Period &c.—Venus as a telescopic object.—Surface-markings on the planet.—Rotation-period.—Faintness of the markings.—Twilight on Venus.—Alleged Satellite.—Further observations required.—Transits of Venus.—Occultations of Venus.
“Friend to mankind, she glitters from afar,— Now the bright evening, now the morning star.”
_Beauty of Venus._—This planet has an expressive name, and it naturally leads us to expect that the object to which it is applied is a beautiful one. The observer will not be disappointed in this anticipation: he will find Venus the most attractive planet of our system. No such difficulties are encountered in finding Venus as in detecting Mercury; for the former recedes to a distance of 47° from the Sun, and sometimes remains visible 4½ hours after sunset, as in February 1889. But Venus owes her beauty not so much to favourable position as to surpassing lustre. None of the other planets can compare with her in respect to brilliancy. The giant planet Jupiter is pale beside her, and offers no parallel. Ruddy Mars looks faint in her presence, and does not assume to rivalry.
This planet alternately adorns the morning and evening sky, as she reaches her W. and E. elongations from the Sun. The ancients styled her _Lucifer_ (“the harbinger of day”) when a morning star and _Hesperus_ when an evening star.
_Brilliancy._—Her brightness is such as to lead her to occasionally become a conspicuous object to the naked eye in daytime, and at night she casts a perceptible shadow. This is specially the case near the epoch of her maximum brilliancy, which is attained when the planet is in a crescent form, with an apparent diameter of about 40″, and situated some 5 weeks from inferior conjunction. Though only a fourth part of the disk is then illuminated, it emits more lustre than a greater phase, because the latter occurs at a wider distance from the Earth and when the diameter is much less. Her appearance is sometimes so striking that it is not to be wondered at that people, not well informed as to celestial events, have attributed it to causes of unusual nature. When the planet was visible as a morning star in the autumn of 1887, an idea became prevalent in the popular mind that the “Star of Bethlehem” had returned, and there were many persons who submitted to the inconvenience of rising before daylight to gaze upon a spectacle of such phenomenal import. And they were not disappointed in the expectancy of beholding a star of extreme beauty, though altogether wrong in surrounding it with a halo of mystery and wonder.