Venus has returned to the early morning sky like a dazzling morning lantern, appearing from beyond the east-southeast horizon before 5 a.m. Standard time in your area.

The day of its inferior conjunction — when it crossed between the sun and Earth and changed from an evening to a morning object — was just one month ago, on Jan. 8. It had migrated far enough away from the sun that it was rising more than an hour before sunrise a week later.

And now that Venus rises more than two hours before the sun, it is considerably easier to see.

Venus is rising in utter darkness, roughly an hour before the first rays of dawn, but also dazzling brightly at its brightest (magnitude –4.9). To give you an idea of how brilliant Venus is right now, consider that it looks to shine 25 times brighter than Sirius, the brightest of all stars. In fact, it's so bright that you might be able to see it with your naked eye after daybreak on particularly clear days. You should be able to see it as a little white "speck" against the blue midday sky if you can maintain track of where it is until sunup.

Venus can even throw a weak but noticeable shadow in regions where there is no light pollution.

During March and April, Venus will appear to gradually fall in altitude in the predawn sky, but from late April to the middle of August, it will appear to rise at around the same time as the start of morning twilight, about two hours before sunrise. As a result, it will almost certainly be a fixture in our morning sky from now until at least the middle of the summer.