Backyard Universe: Get your telescopes ready as Venus draws near. Here's how to see it.

It’s hard to miss the planet Venus.

Unless the moon is up, this second planet from the sun can be the brightest object in the night sky.

Right now, Venus is high in the west as darkness falls.

It’s bright enough to be visible in a clear blue daytime sky if you know where to look. When it’s at its brightest, it can even cast a faint shadow.  Venus comes closer to us than any other planet.

What we know about Venus

For it to come so close, most of what we know about the surface of Venus has come in recent decades.

Perpetual clouds that shroud the planet reflect lots of sunlight making Venus very bright in the night sky. But those same unbroken clouds prevent telescope observations of the surface of Venus. We just see the tops of the clouds and never the surface underneath them.

Most recently the surface of Venus has been mapped by robotic orbiting spacecraft.

The Soviet probe Venera 9 successfully landed on Venus and returned the first images from the surface in October 1975. The crushing pressures and heat, twice as hot as a home oven, only allowed the Venera lander to operate for only  53 minutes after it touched down.

Orbiting probes with cloud-piercing imaging systems have given us a look at the landscape which shows a rugged surface likely shaped by volcanoes.

Phases of Venus

Venus will be with us for several more weeks in the evening sky, but the planet is slowly moving toward a point between us and the sun.

Venus, as well as Mercury, are both “inner” planets whose orbits lie within Earth’s orbit. That makes these innermost worlds appear to undergo phases like the moon.

Because Venus and Mercury are way more distant than the moon, a telescope is needed to see the phases.

Right now Venus is showing us a “half moon” phase with about 50% of the planet in sunlight as seen from Earth. Most any small telescope will show the phase of Venus.

But because Venus is on the move and approaching us, the phase of the planet will shrink to a crescent even as Venus grows larger in the telescope view.

Right now Venus lies about 69 million miles from us but that distance will shrink to about 28 million miles by early August as it passes between us and the sun.  In August the planet will show a slim 3% sunlit crescent but Venus will appear twice as large because its distance then will be less than half of its late May distance.

If you have a small telescope, observing Venus regularly this summer will allow you to follow its shrinking phase and growing apparent diameter. By late summer, you may be able to detect the crescent phase of Venus in binoculars.

Venus will appear brightest in the evening sky on evenings around July 7 so around that date is a good time to look for Venus in a clear blue daytime sky before sunset. It should be visible to the unaided eye but binoculars may help you spot it in the later afternoon western sky.  That might also be a good time after dark to see if you can glimpse a faint shadow cast by Venus. Any shadow would best be detected against light-colored backgrounds.

Perhaps Venus becomes even more noticeable when it appears to pass close to the moon. It can be a real head-turner when the first and second brightest objects in the night sky huddle together.

On Wednesday evening, June 21, the crescent moon will form a striking triangle in the western sky with planets Venus and Mars.  Mars will appear much fainter than Venus.

Close pairings of the moon and Venus always involve a crescent moon because Venus can’t appear any more than 47 degrees from the sun.  That’s the same part of the sky where the crescent moon appears.

If you see a bright planet near an eastward rising full moon you can be guaranteed it’s not Venus.

Venus always appears in the western sky after sunset or in the eastern sky before sunrise.

If you have a question about astronomy, send it to Backyard Universe, P.O. Box 297, Stedman, NC 28391, or email johnnyhorne937@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: How to see Venus in the night sky