VENUS

Sandro Botticelli's iconic goddess of love in his 15th-century masterpiece “Birth of Venus” has now become a “virtual influencer” in a new Italian tourism campaign.

There's a special chance this week to see five planets lined up in the night sky.

Venus and Jupiter, the two brightest planets in our night sky, are putting on a dazzling display in the evening. Venus, the brighter of the two planets, is lower on the horizon. Jupiter is higher in the sky.

Possible naked-eye comet, solar eclipse top list

Leslie Phillips, the British actor best known for his roles in the bawdy “Carry On” comedies and as the voice of the Sorting Hat in the “Harry Potter” movies, has died.

A Florida wildlife director had his arm amputated earlier this month after a routine interaction with one of his park’s large alligators in Highlands County, a Facebook post read.

Look up!

Arguably the best meteor shower of the year peaks Monday night.

Space has been putting a display in the southern evening sky with several bright planets visible.

A joint European-Japanese spacecraft is set to fly by Mercury for the first time on its path to deliver two probes into the planet's orbit in 2025.

Two spacecraft are set to swoop past Venus within hours of each other this week, using the maneuver to do a little bit of bonus science on the way to the center of our solar system.

A new study is throwing cold water on the possibility of life in the clouds of Venus.

Venus is hotter than ever, with a third new robotic explorer on the horizon.

With NASA and ESA missions, there will be at least three robotic explorers headed to the hellish world of Venus and that's not including Rocket Lab's private mission planned in the next few years.

NASA is sending not one but two missions to Venus in the next decade.

NASA is returning to sizzling Venus, our closest yet perhaps most overlooked neighbor, after decades of exploring other worlds.

Pending clear a sky, space will be putting on a show for us down on Earth as three planets are now visible in the evening..

FILE - In this Oct. 11, 2018, file photo, adult film actress Stormy Daniels attends the opening of the adult entertainment fair "Venus," in Berlin. When Donald Trump left the White House in January 2021, he remained "Individual-1" in the federal campaign finance crimes case against his former attorney, Michael Cohen. The prosecution stemmed from six-figure payments Cohen arranged to Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, to keep them quiet during the campaign about alleged affairs with Trump. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from porn star Stormy Daniels, who sought to revive a defamation lawsuit she filed against former President Donald Trump. The justices did not comment in leaving in place a lower court ruling dismissing the case.

AdIt used to be -- in the U.S.-- NASA was the only way to fund and send a robotic mission to another world, but not anymore. The company wants to send the first robotic mission to Venus in 2023. (Image credit: Rocket Lab) (Rocket Lab)Meanwhile, NASA is considering funding its own missions to the planet considered Earth’s twin. Currently there are two Venus missions under consideration and two more equally fascinating missions, one designed to study Jupiter’s moon Io and another to Neptune’s moon Triton. AdHere’s what launching a robotic mission to another planet looks like, in a nutshell, according to Wagner:“This is what a typical NASA mission is.

You can read her piece, “Promising sign of life on Venus might not exist after all”, at NationalGeographic.com. Listen to the full episode of Space Curious below to learn about the fascinating discovery and the process of fact-checking science. Next time on Space Curious: the possibilities and perils of sending robots to Venus. Space Curious is a podcast from WKMG and Graham Media that answers your intergalactic questions. Hosted by WKMG space reporter Emilee Speck, each episode is designed to inspire everyone, from the space curious to the space fanatics.

BERLIN – A spacecraft bound for Mercury swung by Venus on Thursday, using Earth's neighbor to adjust its course on the way to the solar system’s smallest and innermost planet. Launched almost two years ago, the European-Japanese probe BepiColombo took a black-and-white snapshot of Venus from a distance of 17,000 kilometers (10,560 miles), with some of its own instruments in the frame. The fly-by is the second of nine so-called planetary gravity assists that the spacecraft needs for its seven-year trip to Mercury. BepiColombo will make one more fly-by of Venus and six of Mercury itself to slow down before its arrival in 2025. The last spacecraft to visit Mercury was NASA’s Messenger probe, which ended its mission in 2015 after a four-year orbit.

Private space company, Rocket Lab has had plans in the works to launch a spacecraft to Venus on its Electron rocket as soon as 2023. The announcement this week added to the excitement of a mission to the second planet from the sun coming up in the near future. So from a from a climate perspective, I think we have a lot to learn from Venus,” Beck said. “Don’t get me wrong, I like Mars to just not as much as Venus,” Beck said. Rocket Lab is known for its quirky mission names but Beck says they have still not decided to on a name for the mission to Venus.

Astronomers have found a potential sign of life high in the atmosphere of neighboring Venus: hints there may be bizarre microbes living in the sulfuric acid-laden clouds of the hothouse planet. They said it doesn't satisfy the “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" standard established by the late Carl Sagan, who speculated about the possibility of life in the clouds of Venus in 1967. “It’s not a smoking gun," said study co-author David Clements, an Imperial College of London astrophysicist. After three astronomers met in a bar in Hawaii, they decided to look that way at the closest planet to Earth: Venus. ... Not a single process we looked at could produce phosphine in high enough quantities to explain our team’s findings.”That leaves life.

ORLANDO, Fla. – Venus and the Pleiades star cluster won’t be social distancing in the sky Friday evening. Once every eight years, the Pleiades --also known as the Seven Sisters-- star cluster and Venus appear very close in the sky when in reality they are not. The Pleiades is an open star cluster located in the constellation Taurus. How to see:Just after sunset, look west, about halfway up the sky. As the sky gets darker, more of the fainter stars within the Pleiades cluster will become visible.

ORLANDO, Fla.- – There will be breaks in the clouds, but it will be a battle across Central Florida to see a couple of planets in our evening sky. Shortly after sunset Saturday, Venus will hang out with the crescent moon. As usual, Venus will be the brightest object in the sky. Closer to the horizon, a dimmer Saturn will. The moon will move further away from Venus Sunday.

Orlando, Fla- – The two brightest planets in our sky will join together for a second time this year. Over the pasts several nights, Jupiter and Venus have been inching closer to each other and this weekend, will put on a show in the evening sky. After sunset, look southwest and the two brightest objects in the sky will quickly grab your attention. Saturn will also be in view over the weekend. Look up and to the left of Venus and Jupiter and you will find a dimmer Saturn in comparison.

CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – Mercury is putting on a rare celestial show next week, parading across the sun in view of most of the world. Unlike its 2016 transit, Mercury will score a near bull's-eye this time, passing practically dead center in front of our star. Earthlings get treated to just 13 or 14 Mercury transits a century. Mercury is 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) in diameter, compared with the sun's 864,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers.) Although the trek will appear slow, Mercury will zoom across the sun at roughly 150,000 mph (241,000 kph).