The brightest planet in our western sky for most of spring and into this summer, appears to have disappeared. Venus has slipped so low in the western sky you almost can't find it. The planet used to be high in the sky, a beacon at twilight. Now it is just too close to the sun to be visible, though still possible to see.

Venus is closer than you think. Venus is about to be precisely between the Earth and the Sun, thus not visible to us.

In just a few days, Venus will reach inferior conjunction. If you could see it with some optical aid, it would look silhouetted and in a thin crescent.

The planet is closest to the earth on Sunday, August 13. Give it a couple of mornings and you might see the distant planet at dawn.

The Old Farmer's Almanac ventures to predict its appearance on August 20, but we aren't sure.

The red planet Mars is also going to disappear from our western sky in the nights ahead, too low to see. Late this month Mars will be 231 million miles away, about as far away as it gets.