To see Venus you must look for her early in the morning in the east before the Sun is up, or in the evening in the west just after the Sun has gone down. This is the reason Venus is sometimes called an _evening star_ and sometimes a _morning star_. Venus goes through phases like Mercury and our Moon, but these cannot be seen with the naked eye. When Venus and the Sun get too close together she cannot be seen, for the light of the Sun is so powerful that her reflected light is dimmed by it. Venus is a bright straw color and she is a beautiful object in the sky when visible, but there are weeks at a time when she cannot be seen, by reason of the Sun outshining her when she is between us and the Sun or on the other side of the Sun. The day and the year of Venus are, like Mercury, probably equal, and hence one side of Venus is always turned toward the Sun and basks in its light and heat, while the other side is turned away from the Sun and is doomed forever to cold and darkness. Venus is 67 millions of miles from the Sun. Her diameter is 7,700 miles. Her day is 225 of our days long. Her year is 225 of our days long. =Our Earth.=—The _Earth_ is the third planet in distance from our Sun, and although it is small compared with some of the others it is so important to us that it will be described in a separate chapter. Fig. 55 shows a view of the Earth as she would be seen from the Moon. [Illustration: FIG. 55.—THE EARTH.] [Illustration: FIG. 56.—JUPITER.] The Earth is 93 millions of miles from the Sun. Her diameter is 7,920 miles. Her day is 24 hours long. Her year is 365 days long. =Seeing Jupiter.=—_Jupiter_, the largest planet which revolves round our Sun, is fifth in distance from him. He is not as bright as Venus, but he is brighter than any of the fixed stars, and by his brightness and silvery color he is quite easy to recognize. This great planet seems not to have cooled down yet into a nice world like our own Earth or someone’s else Mars, but rather he is a ball surrounded by clouds of hot vapor. Still he is not hot enough to give out any light himself, but like the rest of the planets he shines by the reflected light of the Sun. Fig. 56 is a view of Jupiter as seen through a telescope; one of the moons, and its shadow on the planet, is shown. Jupiter is crossed with several bands and he has nine moons to light up his great surface on a dark night, but neither his belts nor his moons can be seen without a glass. Jupiter is 483 millions of miles from the Sun. His diameter is 87,000 miles. His day is about 10 of our hours long. His year is almost 12 of our years long. [Illustration: FIG. 57.—SATURN.] =Seeing Saturn.=—It is not quite as easy to single out _Saturn_ with the naked eye, for his light is just about as bright as Capella in the constellation of Auriga, or any of the other first magnitude stars.