Viewing Venus

According to stargazers and astronomers, Venus has long since been believed to be the twin of our own planet, Earth. But, there is one major difference between where we live 'down here' and that brightly shining planet 'up there'. Venus is uninhabitable to humans. Venus is also closer to the Sun than we are, which accounts for its much more increased atmospheric volatility, thus being mostly responsible for its past oceans to boil resulting in a serious greenhouse effect.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, when the B-movie style science fiction film genre was peaking, quite a number of films were made with Venus in the title, like "Stranger From Venus", "First Spaceship On Venus", "Zontar, the Thing from Venus" and "Venus Wars". Special effects in such films were nowhere near as polished as they are today but, the makers just had to do the best they could with the limited resources they had at their disposal.

However, I am not writing this post to talk about mostly American-made space movies but, about what we can view from the sky on a clear night. Venus is our closest neighbouring planet and, as we look up towards the sky at night from our house here on the South-east coast of Kent when there's little or no cloud about, we can see Venus sparkling brightly above. We don't need a telescope, just our human eyes and, knowing when and in what direction to look. We call it our guiding light; Venus is also the ruling planet for love, beauty and relationships.

We are not mistaking Venus for the Moon or the International Space Station or even the Tiangong Space Station. It is most definitely Venus. It doesn't look large but more the size of a pin prick in the grander scheme of things. But its brightness reveals it to be nearer than most of the stars and that is how we can easily pick it out. Some people mix Venus up with the North Star; that star, also known as Polaris, is a totally different entity to Venus and can also be seen clearly in the night sky when cloud cover is at a minimum.

Venus is known, though, as the Morning Star or the Evening Star or even the Shepherd's Star. The planet has those nicknames for good reason; it can light the sky up when it is dark up there in space. It may not be a liveable planet in our lifetime but I for one am happy that it is up there 'in reserve' as and when its atmosphere calms right down and Mars turns out to be a non-starter for human habitation. Its very presence in the night sky also reminds us that, for as long as it keeps appearing, all is well in the Universe.

Trevor Mulligan