Editing Venus (section)

===Early observation===
Venus is in Earth's sky bright enough to be visible [[Naked eye|without aid]], making it one of the [[classical planets]] that human cultures have known and identified throughout history, particularly for being the third brightest object in Earth's sky after the Sun and the Moon. Because the movements of Venus appear to be discontinuous (it disappears due to its proximity to the sun, for many days at a time, and then reappears on the other horizon), some cultures did not recognize Venus as a single entity;<ref name="Cooley"/> instead, they assumed it to be two separate stars on each horizon: the morning and evening star.<ref name=Cooley/> Nonetheless, a [[cylinder seal]] from the [[Jemdet Nasr period]] and the [[Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa]] from the [[First Babylonian dynasty]] indicate that the ancient Sumerians already knew that the morning and evening stars were the same celestial object.<ref name=Sachs_1974/><ref name=Cooley/><ref name=Hobson_2009/>

[[File:Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa.jpg|thumb|upright=0.75|Oldest known recording of Venus positions, on the [[Babylonia]]n ''[[Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa]]'' (1600 BC)]]

In the Old [[Babylonia]]n period, the planet Venus was known as Ninsi'anna, and later as Dilbat.<ref>Enn Kasak, Raul Veede. Understanding Planets in Ancient Mesopotamia. Folklore Vol. 16. Mare Kõiva & Andres Kuperjanov, Eds. ISSN 1406-0957</ref> The name "Ninsi'anna" translates to "divine lady, illumination of heaven", which refers to Venus as the brightest visible "star". Earlier spellings of the name were written with the [[cuneiform]] sign si4 (= SU, meaning "to be red"), and the original meaning may have been "divine lady of the redness of heaven", in reference to the colour of the morning and evening sky.<ref name=Heimpel_1982/>

The Chinese historically referred to the morning Venus as "the Great White" ({{transliteration|zh|Tàibái}} {{lang|zh|太白}}) or "the Opener (Starter) of Brightness" ({{transliteration|zh|Qǐmíng}} {{lang|zh|啟明}}), and the evening Venus as "the Excellent West One" ({{transliteration|zh|Chánggēng}} {{lang|zh|長庚}}).<ref name=Needham_1959/>

The ancient Greeks initially believed Venus to be two separate stars: [[Phosphorus (morning star)|Phosphorus]], the morning star, and [[Hesperus]], the evening star. [[Pliny the Elder]] credited the realization that they were a single object to [[Pythagoras]] in the sixth century BC,<ref name=Pliny_1991/> while [[Diogenes Laërtius]] argued that [[Parmenides]] (early fifth century) was probably responsible for this discovery.<ref name=Berkert_1972/> Though they recognized Venus as a single object, the ancient Romans continued to designate the morning aspect of Venus as [[Lucifer]], literally "Light-Bringer", and the evening aspect as [[Hesperus|Vesper]],<ref name=Dobbin_2002/> both of which are literal translations of their traditional Greek names.

In the second century, in his astronomical treatise ''[[Almagest]]'', [[Ptolemy]] theorized that both Mercury and Venus were located between the Sun and the Earth. The 11th-century [[Samanid Empire|Persian]] astronomer [[Avicenna]] claimed to have observed a [[transit of Venus]] (although there is some doubt about it),<ref name="Goldstein"/> which later astronomers took as confirmation of Ptolemy's theory.<ref name=Enc_Irnica/> In the 12th century, the [[Al-Andalus|Andalusian]] astronomer [[Ibn Bajjah]] observed "two planets as black spots on the face of the Sun"; these were thought to be the transits of Venus and Mercury by 13th-century [[Maragheh observatory|Maragha]] astronomer [[Qotb al-Din Shirazi]], though this cannot be true as there were no Venus transits in Ibn Bajjah's lifetime.<ref name=Ansari_2002/>{{refn|group=note
|Several claims of transit observations made by mediaeval Islamic astronomers have been shown to be sunspots.<ref name="VaqueroVázquez2009"/> Avicenna did not record the date of his observation. There was a transit of Venus within his lifetime, on 24 May 1032, although it is questionable whether it would have been visible from his location.<ref name="Kennard"/>}}

[[File:Dresden Codex p09.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.7|The [[Pre-Columbian era|Pre-Columbian]] Mayan ''[[Dresden Codex]]'', which calculates appearances of Venus]]