The evening star

05/11/12, 9 pm looking west

Friday, May 11th was a perfect day of cool, clear cerulean sky, gentle breezes and bright sunshine. So, nothing much to paint during the day, right? I waited until evening to catch Venus in the west with the beginnings of an overcast sky. The clouds moved through the sky framing the brilliant planet and reflecting ambient light from the city below.


Early observers thought that Venus was two stars, one that appeared in the morning and one that shown in the evening. Here's a nice summary from a Wikipedia article:

Venus was known to ancient civilizations both as the "morning star" and as the "evening star", names that reflect the early understanding that these were two separate objects. The Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa, dated 1581 BC, shows that the Babylonians understood that the two were a single object, referred to in the tablet as the "bright queen of the sky," and could support this view with detailed observations. The Greeks thought of the two as separate stars, Phosphorus and Hesperus, until the time of Pythagoras in the sixth century BC. The Romans designated the morning aspect of Venus as Lucifer, literally "Light-Bringer", and the evening aspect as Vesper.

 I like the name the Babylonians gave the planet--Venus, bright queen of the sky.

Cooler

05/06/12, 3:30 pm, looking northwest

Seasonable temperatures today with highs in the mid-70's and lows in the 50's. Cool, cloudy and rainy all the day until late afternoon when it began to clear. You can see one break in the clouds in this watercolor in the upper right.


This is more like what May is usually like: rain, vibrant green grass, irises, peonies and honeysuckle blooming, mulberries ripening, and birds feeding their babies.