Go out early this evening, September 21, 2018… for a look at a crescent Venus.

If you have a good view of the southwestern sky, head out right around sundown. Even in the twilight, you’ll easily be able to see Venus. But you DO need to be out early enough… it sets around 8:30pm EST.

Because Venus is between the Earth and the Sun, we sometimes see it in phases. And right now, it appears as a crescent in the early evening sky, though you can’t tell with the naked eye. It just looks like a very bright, untwinkling star. In fact, it’s so bright, you might even mistake it for an airplane… Venus has also been mistaken as a UFO.

So the only way you can see the crescent Venus is through a telescope. Any telescope should do. It’ll look like a distant crescent moon. However, because it’ll be so close to the horizon when you see it, you might notice some atmospheric distortion that’ll make it look like a mirage. In my opinion, that’s part of the fun.

Venus has been called Earth’s “Sister Planet,” mostly because it’s about the same size as Earth, and it’s nearby. But it’s in fact a VERY different planet.

You’ve probably heard that its surface is hot enough to melt lead… that’s because of its thick atmosphere that traps the sun’s heat. But there’s other weird stuff going on there too… it has the longest rotation period of any planet in our solar system… 243 days. And it takes about 225 days to orbit the sun. So essentially, its day lasts longer than its year. Oh, and it spins backwards compared to Earth, so the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. And did I mention the sulfuric acid rain?