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Venus and Jupiter: An Ancient Rivalry

Hello, this is Mary Stewart Adams with “The Storyteller’s Guide to the Night Sky.”

The two brightest objects in our sky after Sun and Moon are the planets Venus and Jupiter, and this week they make a spectacularly close approach to one another in the morning sky.

On Monday morning, August 18, looking east about an hour before sunrise, Venus and Jupiter will make the closest planet-to-planet conjunction of the year.

This pairing, when viewed through the lens of Ancient Greek mythology, sets up an interesting story ~ and although it’s a beautiful apparition in the sky, it was once associated with a rather challenging, ancient rivalry.

First, we have the planet Venus, usually associated with goddesses of love and beauty. For the Greeks, when Venus appeared as the brilliant morning star, the planet was associated with the Titan God Prometheus, who stole a spark of flame from the chariot of Helios as he bore the Sun across the sky. Prometheus gave this flame as a gift to mankind.

Then, we have the planet Jupiter, associated with the Greek God Zeus, King of the Olympians and wielder of thunderbolts and lightning. Zeus was angered that Prometheus gave fire to mankind, and punished him by chaining him to a rock where he was unable to defend himself against a vulture that devoured his liver every day. As a Titan, Prometheus was immortal, so this fate would have been eternal, had he not been rescued by another ancient Hero, Hercules.

We can see this rivalry in the morning sky on Monday, and hour before sunrise, and to accompany the apparition, perhaps these words of 19th century British Romantic poet Lord Byron’s poem “Promethues” will serve: “Thy godlike crime was to be kind, to render with thy precepts less the sum of human wretchedness, and strengthen man with his own mind.”

Look for this triumph of the defiant spirit in the east Monday and throughout the coming week.

I’m Mary Stewart Adams, from Emmet County’s International Park at the Headlands.