Look west-northwest after sunset on Thursday, April 23, to see a stunning celestial pairing — bright planet Venus just a few degrees from the delicate stars of the beautiful Pleiades, an open cluster of stars in the constellation Taurus. It’s a beautiful naked-eye sight — the brightest planet in the sky gliding past one of its most famous star clusters — and it marks the start of Venus’s long dominance of the evening sky through October 2026. However, if you have binoculars, it’s perhaps the best night of the year to glimpse distant Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun, close to Venus.
Venus in the Pleiades, as seen on April 3, 2020. (Costfoto/Barcroft Media via Getty Images)
Barcroft Media via Getty Images
Venus sits about three degrees below the Pleiades after sunset on Thursday, April 23, and Friday, April 24, easily fitting within a single binocular field of view — but also visible to the naked eye as the twilight sky darkens.
Just to the lower left of Venus will be blue-green Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun. The two planets will appear closest on Thursday, April 23, making it the best opportunity of the year to glimpse an otherwise very tricky-to-find Uranus.
Venus is now firmly established as the “Evening Star,” visible for up to 90 minutes after sunset and climbing higher each night. It will remain a dominant feature of the evening sky through October 2026, becoming obvious even before sunset. In August, it reaches its highest above the horizon, and by mid-September, it becomes the brightest object in the night sky after the moon.
Looking west-northwest after sunset on April 23, 2026, Venus will be close to the Pleiades — and even closer to distant planet Uranus.
Stellarium
Known as M45 to astronomers, the Pleiades open cluster of stars is in the constellation Taurus, around 440 light-years from the solar system. The Pleiades contains about 1,000 stars born together from the same cloud of gas and dust. However, only six or seven of its brightest members are visible to the naked eye — hence its nickname, the Seven Sisters. At a mere 100 million years old, the stars of the Pleiades are extremely young compared to the many billion-year-old stars in the night sky — including our 4.6 billion-year-old sun.
The conjunction of Venus and Uranus‚ visible only in binoculars or a small telescope, is an optical illusion. Venus, an inner planet, orbits just 67 million miles (108 million km) from the sun, whereas Uranus is 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) away. With a top surface temperature of 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius), Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system. In comparison, Uranus holds the record for the coldest temperatures at -371 degrees Fahrenheit (-224 degrees Celsius). Both planets have odd rotations. Venus takes 243 Earth days to rotate once on its axis — a longer time than its year (225 days) — while Uranus has a dramatic axial tilt of 98 degrees, which causes parts of the planet to remain without sunlight for 42 Earth years.
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