Most of the Solar System’s planets will be visible in the evening, while Venus is a dazzling morning object
Venus is widely known as the ‘evening star’, because it’s often seen shining brilliantly in the west after sunset. However, it is just as often visible in the morning sky before sunrise, and that’s the case this coming month. All through December, through the festive celebrations and into the New Year beyond them, Venus will be a dazzling ‘morning star’. Venus will be the brightest, most striking point of light in the morning sky, putting every other star and planet to shame with its brilliance. At the end of November Venus will be rising four hours before the Sun, giving you plenty of time to enjoy seeing it before the sky begins to brighten with the approach of dawn. By Christmas morning Venus will have moved from Virgo into neighbouring Libra and will have faded a little, but will still be rising three hours before the Sun, so you’ll be able to take a moment’s peace to appreciate its beauty if you head out for a walk before the present-opening madness begins.
In early December Venus will have some company in the sky. If you’re up in the early hours on 8 December you’ll see a lovely waning crescent Moon shining to Venus’ upper right. The following morning, the Moon, now an even thinner crescent, will be just to the lower right of Venus, and the morning after that the fingernail-clippingthin crescent Moon will be shining to the lower left of Venus. On all of these mornings the celestial pair will be a striking sight to the naked eye, a lovely sight in binoculars and bright enough to photograph using just the camera on your phone.
Venus is named after the goddess of love because it is so beautiful in the sky. It’s also often referred to as ‘Earth’s twin’, but while they are a similar size, that’s a very misleading nickname because the two worlds could not be less alike. Where Earth is a lush, green-and-blue world teeming with life, Venus is a hellish planet with a curdled, poisonous carbon dioxide atmosphere and a barren landscape covered with plates of barren rock, where the pressures and temperatures are so high that no life is possible. The few space probes that landed on Venus didn’t last long, and any astronauts brave enough to visit Venus in the future will have to wear spacesuits resembling suits of armour if they’re going to last longer than a few minutes on its desolate, furnace-hot surface.
Constellation: Sagittarius Magnitude: +0.4 AM/PM: PM
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, so it can only ever be seen close to it in the sky, too, glinting in the twilight before sunrise or after sunset. This month Mercury will be in the evening sky, but will be so close to the Sun it will effectively set at the same time, so it won’t be visible.
Constell
