VENUS is an absolutely beautiful sight after sunset now, a startlingly-bright evening star shining above the trees and roofs all through the evening, writes STUART ATKINSON. You simply can't miss Venus: just look to the south west as soon as darkness starts to fall, around 5.30pm, and you will see a silvery-white spark of light high up in the sky. As the sky darkens and the stars start to come out Venus will just get brighter and brighter, until it looks like a lantern in the sky, shining with such an intense silvery light that it demands you look at it and ignore everything else in the sky.

If you can't spot Venus at its best, after sunset, don't worry. Venus is now so far from the Sun in the sky that it blazes in the west for more than four hours after sunset, not setting until half past nine.

As you look at Venus you'll notice a fainter 'star' close by, to its left, looking a lot more orange than silvery-white Venus. This is actually the planet Mars, and if you've been following this column and looking at them in the sky you'll know that these two planets have been moving slowly, moving closer and closer together in the sky over the past month. On Thursday and Friday nights they'll be at their closest proximity, and then will start to move apart again. If you have binoculars look at Venus and Mars through them and their colour differences will really stand out.

Stuart Atkinson

Eddington Astronomical Society of Kendal