Mercury will be brightest and easiest to spot in the evening sky between May 3 and May 24; brightest and easiest to spot in the morning sky between October 18 and November 1.

For Northern Hemisphere skywatchers, the planet will appear lower in the sky, more to one side (the left side) of the sunset. But Venus will still be a dazzling light in the sunset direction throughout November 2021. You’ll also see the moon slide past Venus on the evenings of November 7 and 8, 2021.

At its best, Venus is brighter than all other celestial objects except the sun and moon. Right now, the brilliant planet is so bright that you can actually see it in the daytime, if you know where to look. Venus doesn’t make any visible light of its own. It shines by reflecting sunlight.

Venus is really easy to find after the sun has set. Just look generally west, where Venus will be visible about 40º above the horizon (around halfway between the horizon and the zenith above your head).

The Visible Planets Jupiter and Saturn can be found in the southeast after sunset. Venus is well into another evening apparition. By 6:15 p.m., Venus will be about 16° above the south southwestern horizon. Venus will set at 8:23 p.m. Venus reached maximum eastern elongation October 29, 2021..

Planets Visible in Great Britain

The mission wouldn’t put humans on the surface of Venus—that would be impossible to do without killing them. Instead, the humans would fly by the planet to get a closer look at the planet from above and operate a team of drones that would descend deep into the torrid atmosphere of the planet and down to the surface.

Obviously, that answer would be “what view?” since Venus is cloaked with a perpetual overcast. But if it were somehow possible to get a view of the night sky from Venus right now, there would appear a uniquely stunning sight: our home planet Earth. Click here for more Space.com videos…

As it orbits the Sun, Venus shows phases like the Moon. When it is closest to the Earth, passing between us and the Sun, Venus appears almost entirely unilluminated. When it passes around the far side of the Sun, its disk appears almost completely illuminated.

Preceding Venus into the evening sky in late April was the planet Mercury. From early May the two planets begin the first of three paired apparitions which take place during 2021 (a paired apparition being when the two planets are visible together for a prolonged period of time, either in the morning sky or the evening sky).

But right now as seen from Venus, Earth is not a crescent but a fully illuminated disk. In addition, our two worlds are now at their closest proximity to each other, at 26.9 million miles (43.2 million km), making the “full Earth” appear about 1.75 times larger than the crescent Venus.