Perelandra

Both the humans trembled– Merlin because he did not know what was coming, Ransom because he knew. And now it came. It was fiery, sharp, bright and ruthless, ready to kill, ready to die, outspeeding light: it was Charity, not as mortals imagine it, not even as it has been humanised for them since the Incarnation of the Word, but the translunary virtue, fallen upon them direct from the Third Heaven, unmitigated. They were blinded, scorched, deafened. They thought it would burn their bones. They could not bear that it should continue. They could not bear that it should cease. So Perelandra, triumphant among planets, whom men call Venus, came and was with them in the room.

C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

Jumping from one commitment to another tonight, I struggled through Seattle traffic to try and reach a clear place to watch the heavens at 5:50 P.M. The sun was setting and the planet Venus would be burning brightly next to a crescent moon.

In both of the above shots, you can see a tiny dot to the upper right of the moon. That is Venus, our sister planet, the morning and evening star. Second from the sun, the closest planet to Earth, she spins the opposite direction and has a surface temperature around 863 degrees.

There are many amazing things to know about Venus.

As I hurried along to get to a more open place, I could hardly believe that I was witnessing this. An aircraft was heading right for Venus and the moon! I ran south and took this photo as it passed over Venus.

This aircraft skimmed the top of Venus and sailed like an arrow towards the moon. There was nothing else in the sky when this happened; this was phenomenal.

Wow!

Threading the moon…

That moment left me in awe. Of all of the places a flying machine could have been in this vast expanse of sky… I was blessed to witness that!

Luna on the left, Pelelandra on the right. What a night.

The color of the sky changed rapidly like an undulating octopus blending into a Kandinsky painting.

One must wonder if someone was standing on the moon waving at Venus.

What cosmological protoplasm is this? In several shots, Venus appeared as a burning sphere of citrine.

Good to see you, neighbors.

Que bella noche…

Venus and Mars are our next of kin: they are the two most Earth-like planets that we know about. They’re the only two other very Earth-like planets in our solar system, meaning they orbit close to the sun; they have rocky surfaces and thin atmospheres.

David Grinspoon

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