Observe before dawn and you’ll be able to catch dazzling Venus, Mercury and Mars in all their glory

PLANET OF THE MONTH

Venus is our planet of the month, not just because it will be so strikingly bright – and therefore easy to see – in the sky before dawn, but because it will have lots of company in the sky during our observing period. Having played ‘second fiddle’ to Mars for many years, Venus is now well and truly in the scientific spotlight. Various space agencies and private companies are planning on sending missions there to study and map its surface and even look for signs of life in its atmosphere.

We already know, thanks to previous missions, that Venus is roughly the same size as Earth, so much so that it is often called ‘Earth’s twin’, but that is where the family similarity ends. Venus is a hellish planet, and walking on its rocky surface would be like walking in a furnace; the same thick, curdled atmosphere of poisonous carbon dioxide gas which makes Venus shine so brightly in our sky, reflecting the Sun’s light like a mirror, traps the Sun’s heat so efficiently that the planet’s surface temperature is close to 400 degrees Celsius (752 degrees Fahrenheit). Its thickness also gives Venus a surface pressure so lethally high anyone landing on it would need a special pressure suit, like a deep-sea diver, to stay alive.