Dates for your saved location. Venus spends about nine months on one side of the Sun, vanishes into its glare, then reappears on the other side.

Venus is the brightest object in the night sky after the Moon — dazzling enough to cast faint shadows and to be mistaken for a UFO. Beneath its serene glow hides a hellish world: a runaway greenhouse atmosphere of carbon dioxide crushes the surface at 90 times Earth’s pressure and holds it at 465°C, hot enough to melt lead.

When Venus is in view it is unmistakable — the brilliant “star” blazing in the west after sunset or the east before dawn. Through a telescope it shows no surface markings, but it runs through phases like the Moon, from a small bright disc to a large thin crescent as it swings between us and the Sun.