The Maya were one of many civilizations that revered Venus. Their calendars kept track of its periods and revolved rituals around its milestones. If you were not one of the ruler’s favorite in-laws, you’d have been wise to avoid steep-staired pyramids when the Evening Star attained greatest brilliance. The cycles of that brightest “star” in the heavens are easily followed by anyone — even if they’re totally unknown to the vast majority in our modern Netflix world.
Venus is now starting an extraordinary cycle. This in-your-face apparition begins the next clear evening you’re in twilight. Venus always starts out low, but the evening star is neither very far down nor the least bit hard to find. And though it already outshines every star and planet, its brightness begins modestly too. The ghostly materialization of the evening star happens once every 19 months. You’ll initially notice it 30-40 minutes after sunset, just before the stars come out, slightly left of where the Sun set. It then spends the next nine months in the west after sunset, slowly growing higher and brighter.
So you’ll easily see it now as a solitary star against the evening twilight. It will become high enough to really pop out during the December holidays. Then in January and February the Evening Star will achieve its highest and shadow-casting brightest, which was when the Mayans went batty. Then you won’t have to look for it. On its own, it will find you, grabbing your attention about an hour after sunset.
These appearances vary greatly. During a poor apparition like the one in 2021, Venus’s orbit around the Sun makes a low, sideways slant from the sunset position, so that even when it reaches its normally-comfortable 47° separation from the solar glare, it sits leftward from the sunset point rather than being that same distance above it. During such apparitions, which we’ll suffer through again in 2029, the Evening Star never gets high but stays buried behind distant hills or skyline trees.
So a great apparition is special, and that’s what’s now beginning. If you’d like to put your life in tune with the Evening Star, mark four extra-special dates on your calendar. December 4, January 3 and February 1, when Venus will closely meet the crescent Moon in brilliant conjunctions. And January 17, when it hovers next to Saturn.
As December gives way to January, Venus climbs dramatically higher and gets twice as brilliant as it is now. Everyone around the world will stare at it then. But the music stops in March, when the Evening Star sinks lower each evening until it plays hard to get by month’s end.
April finds Venus gone, leaving evening twilight suddenly empty and we Evening Star fanatics abruptly forlorn by the end of the after-sunset brilliance.  But by late that month those with sleep disorders can start to see it before dawn, low down through their sunrise-facing window.
Its morning star apparition then begins, but with everything unfolding in reverse order. As a current evening star, Venus starts out at its least impressive and keeps getting better. But when it becomes a springtime morning star, Venus begins brilliantly and slowly loses luster, anticlimactically glued in place as a fading predawn morning star until next November.
That’s its whole cycle, which now begins with Venus launching its best Evening Star apparition in eight years. The show starts whenever you first spot it in evening twilight, with that nearest world continuing its Broadway run for an entire year.
Join the family! 
