What Is That Bright White ‘Star’ Shining In The Southwest After Sunset?

You’re seeing a bright white “star” in the post-sunset evening sky and you’re wondering what it is—and why it’s there.

It’s Venus, the brightest object in the night sky aside from the Sun and Moon.

Earth’s hotter sister planet has been gradually rising into the night sky from low in the southwest at Christmas to where it is right now. It’s on the cusp of being unmissable to anyone looking towards the southwest after dark, though only for a couple of hours or so, after which it sinks below the horizon.

It’s a taste of things to come because 2023 is going to be dominated by a brightening Venus.

Venus has an eight-year cycle in which it orbits the Sun 13 times, with periods dominating Earth’s post-sunset night skies as a brilliant “Evening Star” and periods as “Morning Star.”

In 2023 the second planet from the Sun will rise higher into the post-sunset sky and get brighter through June 4, when it reaches its farthest from the Sun—at least, from our point of view on Earth.

Before that Venus will “star” as the brightest object alongside some exquisite sights that no sky-gazer should miss. Here’s when to watch the planet at its brilliant best:

• February 21 -23, 2023: Jupiter, Venus and a slim crescent Moon will align. Look southwest after sunset.
• March 1, 2023: Jupiter and Venus will appear a mere 0º.32’ from each other—the width of an outstretched finger held up to the sky. The best advice is to look each night from late February to about March 4.
• April 10, 2023: Venus close to the Pleiades.
• May 21, 2023: Venus close to the two brightest stars in Gemini, Castor and Pollux.
• June 4, 2023: Venus at its “greatest elongation east”—the highest it will appear above the horizon, in the evening sky.
• July 7, 2023: Venus at its “greatest brilliance”—the brightest it ever gets despite by now being a crescent—though by now much lower on the horizon.

After a stunning late winter, spring and early summer performance, Venus will quickly fade and sink into the horizon, only to appear as a pre-dawn “Morning Star” for an equally spectacular, but less viewed, apparition.

Venus may be Earth’s twin planet, but aside from both being terrestrial planets strewn with volcanoes and craters with almost identical density there are some big differences:

• The surface of Venus can reach 869°F/465°C and it has a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide. It’s hotter than Mercury despite not being as close to the Sun.
• Venus takes 243 Earth-days to rotate, but only 225 Earth-days to orbit the Sun. So a day on Venus is slightly longer than a year!
• All the planets in our solar system rotate anti-clockwise except Venus.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.