On February 14, 2025, Venus will reach its greatest brilliancy of the year, shining at an astonishing magnitude of -4.9. This will make Venus the brightest object in the night sky, outshining everything except the sun and moon. You’ll be able to spot it clearly in the western sky after sunset, even in the evening twilight.
I love seeing Venus in the sky. A reminder of where we are and the scale of it.
Our place in the universe:
It takes our Sun 250 million years to orbit the Milky Way.Ultimately, the Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across and 1,000 light-years thick. Our solar system is located about 26,000 light-years away from the center of the galaxy.If that’s not impressive enough, our star is just 1 of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way. As such, scientists estimate that there could be as many as 3.2 trillion planets in our galaxy.And keep in mind, these are just the numbers for our own tiny galaxy. According to NASA, there are about 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.
Learn more:Image credit: Caltech/ Jolene Creighton