This month’s planets

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

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.

At the end of January Venus will be a brilliant ‘morning star’, blazing in the southeast before dawn, brighter by far than anything else in that part of the sky and rising almost two hours before the Sun floods the sky with light.

By 3 February Venus will form a predawn triangle with two other worlds, both much fainter, but easy to spot because of their proximity to dazzling Venus. To Venus’ lower left you’ll see Mercury, looking like a fainter, more copper-hued star, and to Venus’ lower right you’ll spot orangecoloured Mars. If you have a DSLR camera – or a good camera on your phone – this planetary pyramid will be a great target if you’re up early enough to see it. By 10 February Venus will be at its best – a dazzling silvery lantern dominating the sky before dawn, close to Mars and rising more than two hours before the Sun – but after that it will start to move back towards the Sun and its visibility will decrease.