Our dazzling bright “evening star” Venus will continue to put on a spectacular display in the western sky this winter. Our sister planet will continue to brighten until it reaches a stunning shadow-casting –4.5 magnitude in February.

Venus undergoes a 548-day cycle from a morning star to evening star and back to morning star again. When our sister planet is a morning star, it can be seen in the eastern sky before sunrise. When it’s an evening star, it’s visible in the western sky after sunset. Each appearance lasts for nearly nine months, during which our sister planet slowly moves away from the sun as viewed from Earth. When Venus reaches its greatest elongation this week, the planet is at a point in its orbit where it is farthest from the sun and highest in the sky. Venus, however, won’t be at its brightest until Feb. 18, about four weeks after greatest elongation. Venus will then sink to the western horizon and disappear from the evening sky in the middle of March. It then rapidly reappears in the morning sky in early April.

Our sister planet’s dazzling bright appearance is from its global cloud layer that reflects more than 50 percent of the sunlight that strikes the planet. Venus’ clouds have kept the planet shrouded in mystery. Studies with ground-based radar and space probes have revealed that Venus might have active volcanoes, which periodically vent molten rock and gas into Venus’ atmosphere. They have also discovered that Venus spins backward on its axis. If you could see the sun through the thick cloud cover, it would rise in the west and set in the east.

Our dazzling bright evening star, currently sitting about 35 degrees above the southwestern horizon, is very easy to locate. When Venus is at its brightest in February, it will have moved into western sky.

First Published: January 12, 2017, 5:00 a.m.