Exclusive pictures: Venus at dawn today "shines brilliantly" (picture)

At 5:35 AM on February 17th, the planet Venus shone brightly in the suburbs of Hohhot. During that dawn, the morning star, Venus, became the most dazzling star in the night sky, making this moment an excellent opportunity to observe it for the first time in a year and a half.

Before sunrise that day, the brilliant Venus radiated in the southeastern low sky, its brightness reaching -4.6 magnitude, approximately 600 times brighter than the North Star, with an altitude of about 23 degrees above the horizon. During dawn, one only needed to look up slightly to see a small white dot glowing brilliantly in the eastern sky — this was Venus. If observed through a telescope with 30x magnification, one could even see that Venus looked like a tiny crescent moon.

In ancient China, Venus was known as "Tai Bai Jin Xing" (the Bright Metal Star). When it appeared in the eastern sky at dawn, it was called the Morning Star; when it appeared in the western sky in the evening, it was referred to as the Evening Star or the Dusk Star. Due to its pristine and radiant appearance, in the West, people also named Venus after the goddess of love, Venus. This image was captured by a reporter from Xinhua News Agency.