We celebrated my birthday on Friday by taking the day off and wandering up the coast of Maine. It’s a pretty state and when the weather’s nice but the tourists haven’t arrived yet, it’s sublime.

I noticed the skies were pretty dark there, even with the glow of a few distant city nebulae on the horizons.

As we were driving back home, we kept watching Venus off in the west. Even though I knew Venus was setting, the planet still looked a little different from what I’m used to. It seemed more “reddish,” probably because we were looking at it through the lower part of Earth’s atmosphere—the “muck” as we call it in stargazing circles. But it was shining like a bright beacon as it set.

Venus is still bright in the western sky, and sets late in the evening for the next few weeks. It’ll be the bright light in the western sky that isn’t point-like, doesn’t move like a plane, and isn’t a flying saucer. Look for it if you’re out wandering around enjoying the onset of northern hemisphere summer or early winter in the southern hemisphere.