THIS MONTH'S PLANETS

Venus once again takes pride of place in the summer evening skies for observers

Another month when Venus is the Planet of the Month! Why? Not just because it is the brightest planet in the sky at the moment – although it will be strikingly bright to the naked eye all through the month ahead – and not just because it is so well-placed in the sky after sunset, either. It’s because there will be a lot happening around it in the sky, such as conjunctions with other planets, and the Moon too, and because the announcement of an exciting new scientific discovery about this strangely familiar but totally alien world has put it in the news.

During the month ahead Venus will be a very beautiful evening star indeed. In midMay it will be positioned in Gemini, beneath the constellation’s bright twin stars, Castor and Pollux. It will set around four hours after the Sun, and as darkness falls will look like a vivid silvery spark in the west, shining to the lower right of much fainter, redder-hued Mars. Look to the north-west after sunset on 22 May and you’ll see a spectacularly thin crescent Moon shining very close to Venus, down to its lower right. If you look at this conjunction through binoculars you should also be able to see the faint lavender glow of ‘Earthshine’ illuminating the dark face of the Moon inside the crescent.