Last week, walking west down my street late in the evening, I could see Venus straight ahead of me, a deep red-orange marker in the sky in the very last of sundown. I looked up and around, trying to find the Big Dipper and the Summer Triangle, prominent stars of a July night. I could see Jupiter in the south to my left, but haze or high clouds kept the constellations hidden. The moon, new and dark, had set an hour or so earlier, and I was alone with the planets. Not that I was really alone,