That bright thing in the sky is just Venus, please don’t shoot — again

An astronomical occurrence began this month that twice in history has tricked the U.S. military into firing at a planet.

As scientists were perfecting the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, N.M., the people working there were “naturally in a state of some tension,” wrote Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project.

One morning in July 1945, people on site noticed a mysterious object hovering in the sky. They alerted the Army Air Corps at what is now Kirtland Air Force Base to send fighter planes to intercept the perceived threat.

The director of personnel, who happened to be an astronomer, went straight to Oppenheimer’s office to ask “whether we would stop trying to shoot down Venus.”

Donald Olson, an astronomer and physics professor emeritus at Texas State University in San Marcos, wrote about the military’s confusion of the planet’s daytime appearance in a recent issue of “Sky & Telescope” magazine as this month Venus reaches a similar brightness in the sky.

Starting Saturday, Venus will be at its greatest visibility as it enters a period near greatest elongation — that is, when the planet appears farthest from the sun and is not hidden by its glare, Olson said. He predicts it will be visible during the day on Sept. 14. The cycle occurs every eight years, he said.

These daytime sightings, such as the one at Los Alamos, have occurred throughout history, and Olson has documented them in his four-book series “Celestial Sleuths.” He’s also written about how the military used astronomy in some of its greatest battles, including the D-Day invasion and the Battle of Tarawa, both in World War II.

He learned of the Los Alamos sighting indirectly through an interview-style TV series that former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt hosted in 1950. After interviewing airline pilots about the flying saucer-craze of the era, she wrote to Oppenheimer for his opinion on the subject.

He wrote back with skepticism and told the story of the attempt to shoot down Venus just before the Trinity Test, which was the world’s first nuclear weapon detonation.

“I tell this story only to indicate that even a group of scientists is not proof against the errors of suggestion and hysteria,” Oppenheimer wrote.

Olson said he first began collecting stories of daytime Venus sightings, such as this one, after learning that a sighting in France following military victories of Napoleon Bonaparte had been seen as an omen of the general’s greatness.

The U.S. military’s other attempt to bring down Venus also occurred during World War II, just a few months before Los Alamos.

Sailors aboard the USS New York in February 1945 spotted what appeared to be a luminous metallic balloon trailing the battleship as it moved from Saipan to join the Pacific fleet for the pre-invasion bombardment of Iwo Jima. Their concern was warranted, because the Japanese had been using balloon bombs, which did reach the western coast of the U.S.

Immediately, the crew speculated that it was a Japanese secret weapon, and the ship’s captain ordered anti-aircraft batteries to open fire, according to a “New Yorker” magazine article about the incident.

“The 20-millimeters sounded like popguns, and the tracers faded into the sky, very short,” according to the magazine. “The gunnery officer switched to the 40-millimeters, and they were short, too. … The gunnery officer switched to the 3-inch dual-purposes and opened the range to 15,000 yards. Still too short. We signaled to the destroyer alongside, and it tried its 5-inch guns. Still no dice ...”

The navigator, who was sleeping at the time, came on deck to ask why they were shooting at Venus, which ended the mishap.

Venus also appeared in the daytime sky shortly after President Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, in Washington, though it was properly identified and did not cause concern, Olson said.

One of Lincoln’s bodyguards, Smith Stimmel, wrote that he saw people crowded in the street looking and pointing toward the southern sky at about 1 p.m. Lincoln and those with him also saw it, he wrote.

For more than 20 years, Olson taught a course about astronomy in art, history and literature, because finding the links between them has made his own life richer, he said.

“That’s what I love to do, to make connections between science and the humanities. In this case between astronomy and mysteries from our history or literature,” he said.

To try and see Venus on Sept. 14, Olson recommended going outside within the hour and a half before sunset to find the moon. Venus, for people in the northern hemisphere, should be about 5 degrees to the right, which he said people can estimate by holding a fist toward the sky. A fist is about 10 degrees, so look toward the middle of the hand.

Olson closed his magazine article with one small request: “If you do see it, please don’t try to shoot it down.”