JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The planet Venus is one of the easiest to spot objects in our night sky and the third brightest object in the sky behind the sun and the moon. To the casual viewer, you would think that whenever we look up at the planet with the naked eye it would be the full disk, kind of like a full moon. But that is typically not the case. In fact, most of the time Venus is in a half phase or appears as a crescent under a telescope.
Despite that Venus appears so bright due its relative closeness to earth, at its nearest only about 38 million miles away it appears as a crescent most of the time, but rarely a full disk.
This is because Venus is closer to the sun than the earth so if was to be seen as a full disk it would need to be on the opposite side of then sun. Thus, with its current position relative to earth on the side of the sun it is rather bright in the night sky but not a full disk.
Just a little science tidbit for you the next time you are looking up, if you would like to learn a little more about science in our night sky check out this article.