Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 9/22/2008

Question
When would a NEW Venus be highest in the sky?

ALSO,

When would you expect to see Venus high in the sky at midnight?

Answer
Hi,
1 - When would a NEW Venus be highest in the sky?
The "highest" it would ever be would be "only on the horizon"!
The "new" moment is when all are exactly colliniear with venus actually transiting the sun, and being midway thru the transit!
Consequently depending where you are located , (eastern or western hemisphere), you would se the 1st phase occur "on the horizon", in the evening or dawn.

ref:-
a - http://www.souledout.org/nightsky/venusphases/venusphases.html
b - http://www.venus-transit.de/PlanetPhases/index.html
   [Has a nice venus phase viewer applet embedded in the page].
c - http://www.venus-transit.de/
   [Has many links to lovely applets].

2 - When would you expect to see Venus high in the sky at midnight?
Why not check that out on wikipedia?
If you ask me (Oh you already have!!), THAT appears to be an
impossibility.
No inner planet WILL ever appear high anywhere at midnight!

Consider the worst case!
That Venus is actually residing on the earth's orbit, and is "close by" along the earth's orbit (worst case/best case scenario).
Even in such an eventuality, it would cease to be visible well before midnight.

The moon actually does this two times a month as it lies once ahead of the earth on the earth's orbital circle, crossing inwards towards the sun, and once while crossing the earth's orbit on its journey away from the sun, around the earth!

Each time, such a moon appears "exactly half lit", and appears "overhead" at dawn / evening. And duly disappears around midnight.

In reality, Venus is well midway to the earth from the sun and hence possibility no 2 is NOT POSSIBLE.

Hope that suffices,
regards
Jayen