Don't say goodbye to Venus

It has been an incredible year to see the closet planet to the earth. Venus has been the showstopper in the evening sky all winter. But believe me, you wouldn't want to live there.

For one, it is hot. The nasty atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide and it traps all of the heat from the sun (it is only 67 million miles away). While there are super-sized, hurricane force winds in the upper part of the sky on Venus, the surface has none. And if it did, because of how thick it is, a small breeze would knock you on your butt.

Of course you would have to survive the pressure first. Imagine being the guy on the bottom of a big pile-on. Hard to breath, weight crushing you and you can't move. That is what a vacation on Venus would be like. And the darned planet spins in the wrong direction with the sun rising in west, not the east.

The planet not only spins backwards, it takes 243 days for one day on Venus. If you were reading this on Venus, a couple of Earth days might have already passed. In fact, on Venus, one school day would last almost four months.

So it is much more fun to watch than to visit. Every day in March, Venus drops closer to the western horizon after sunset. But as it disappears from the evening sky, it enters the morning sky. It dims a bit toward the end of the month but brightens again as it assumes the title of Morning Star in April.