These nights Venus has been a gorgeous sight in the sky after sunset. We’ve been out walking every night after dinner and tonight we tried to see if we could spot it before the Sun went down. We found it about 45 or so degrees above the horizon right at sunset (we’ve got a little pair of hills to the west of us — your mileage may vary). It looks like a bright, unblinking star up there and as the darkness deepens it really starts to glitter. So, if you haven’t had a chance to go out and find Venus, now’s the time!

I read in the paper the other day about a newborn baby girl in Afghanistan and how her mother’s hopes for her future were looking a bit brighter now than in past years. I kinda wonder about her too — what will she grow up to be? Maybe she’ll become an astronomer and learn more about the world that is her namesake, or study to be a doctor, or raise a family in freedom, or be a political leader in her country.

This little Afghani Venus is named after the second planet from the Sun, an avatar revered in mythology as the goddess of love. What a lovely name for a tiny new life!

Yet, the planet itself makes the drought-ravaged lands of Afghanistan where baby Venus now lives look like a veritable garden of Eden. This distant world is veiled in noxious clouds, which hide a hot, poisonous, volcanic landscape where no human being could possibly live — let alone fall in love!

Starting in early March, the planet Venus will make its own 2002 debut, in the evening skies just after sunset. If you have a clear view of the sky check it out after sundown — it should be a bright, beautiful, almost-but-not-quite starlike object hanging there in the deepening western twilight. Watch it night after night throughout the spring and summer. On the night of May 7 it will appear in close conjunction with the planet Saturn, and with Mars on May 10. It dances around with Jupiter on the evening of June 3.

None of these conjunctions are particularly mysterious or have any cosmic significance. They happen because as planets move around the Sun in their orbits sometimes they appear in the same part of the sky as seen from Earth. They aren’t close to each other, really, nor are they exerting some magical influence because of where they happen to appear. If you see five people standing out in a field and you move so that two of them are in line with each other it doesn’t mean that they are somehow cosmically aligned. Same with the planets.

If you want more information on where to look for Venus or any other night-sky sight from your location, point your browser to the Sky & Telescope web site. There’s an interactive JAVA star chartmaker that allows you to input your location — and will compute a chart for your viewing site. Give it a whirl!