Where is Venus tonight?

How to recognize Venus with the naked eye

Venus is the easiest planet to identify. NASA calls it the brightest planet and, after the Moon, the brightest object in the night sky. When it is well placed, it is a brilliant white point low in the west after sunset, the “evening star,” or low in the east before sunrise, the “morning star.” It appears in twilight while the sky is still blue and often draws attention from people who don’t usually look up.

Like the other planets, Venus shines with a steady light. James Lattis of the University of Wisconsin–Madison explains that a planet shows a tiny disk rather than a point, so the shimmer from turbulent air averages out. Very low near the horizon, though, even Venus can twinkle.

What binoculars and a small telescope show

The reward for pointing optics at Venus is its phases. Because it orbits inside Earth’s orbit, we see different amounts of its sunlit side as it moves around the Sun. NASA describes it in a telescope as looking like a tiny Moon phase, roughly half lit around greatest elongation.

The phase and the size change together. JPL Horizons data show that when Venus is on the far side of the Sun, it appears as a small, nearly full disk about 10 arcseconds wide. As it swings toward Earth, it grows and thins into a crescent. Around its greatest brilliancy it is a crescent about one-quarter lit and roughly 40 arcseconds across. Just before it passes between Earth and the Sun, it becomes a very thin crescent more than 60 arcseconds wide, larger than Jupiter ever looks.

Don’t expect surface features. NASA describes Venus as covered by thick clouds, so a backyard telescope shows a bright, nearly featureless disk.

Why its visibility comes and goes

Venus repeats its cycle of appearances every 584 days, about 19 months, according to NASA’s fact sheet. During that cycle it is an evening object for many months, east of the Sun, climbing higher after sunset until it reaches greatest eastern elongation. It then drops quickly back toward the Sun and passes between Earth and the Sun, an event called inferior conjunction. After a short absence, it reappears in the morning sky, reaches greatest western elongation, and then slowly slides behind the Sun (superior conjunction) before returning to the evening sky.

At greatest elongation, Venus is about 46 to 47 degrees from the Sun, according to JPL Horizons data. That is far more than Mercury, so Venus can stay up for a few hours after sunset or rise a few hours before sunrise, but it is never visible at midnight. Its peak brightness comes about a month before and after inferior conjunction, when it is a large crescent.

Tips for seeing Venus

• Look early. Venus is visible well before the sky is dark. In the evening, look west soon after sunset; in the morning, look east as dawn begins.
• Use twilight for telescopes. Against a dark sky Venus is so bright that it dazzles. Observing in twilight cuts the glare and makes the phase easier to see.
• Watch the phase change. Check Venus every week or two in a small telescope. Over a single apparition, you can follow it from a small gibbous disk to a large crescent.
• Use it as a guide. A crescent Moon passing near Venus is one of the easiest and prettiest sky pairings, and Venus can help you find fainter Mercury nearby when both are up.

Our guide to finding planets explains how to tell planets from stars, and the planets page shows all of them at a glance.