EARTH’S CLOSEST PLANETARY neighbour, Venus, will be visible in the sky next to the moon tonight, after also making an appearance yesterday.

Venus will look like a small bright star to the right of the moon during the night and late evening.

“It’s 100 times brighter than the brightest stars in the sky, so you won’t have any problem seeing it,” the founder and chairman of Astronomy Ireland, David Moore said.

“It’s a planet so if you look at it with a telescope you’ll see that it has a disc, which is roughly a crescent shape.”

The planet appears tiny in comparison to the moon but only because it’s over 200 times further away than the moon is, Moore added.

“If Venus was as close to us as the moon is it would look four times bigger than the moon,” he said.

Venus won’t be visible again from Earth until next year, and is currently close enough to take “relatively good” photos of with a cameraphone, Moore continued.

Astronomy Ireland has asked members of the public viewing Venus tonight to send any pleasing photos of the planet to them for use in their magazine.

“The temperature on Venus is 500 degrees Celsius, meaning that lead and tin would melt and run as liquids on the surface. The atmosphere is choking carbon dioxide gas, almost pure carbon dioxide, and there is battery acid in the clouds.”

“Venus looks beautiful, white, brilliant and serene. In fact, it’s named after the goddess of beauty. But it couldn’t be any further from the truth.”

“If people looking up at it hundreds of years ago had known what it was really like they might have picked a different name for it,” he joked.