Venus, bright in the southwestern sky, early in the evening.

Here are a couple of pictures from my iPad of Venus, last night, a bit after sunset.

 This one has a plane in it, to the right, which just happened to be flying by a minute or so later than the first picture.  That gives an idea of how bright Venus can get in the evening sky.

The brightness of Venus is of course a combination of:

• nearness to the sun
• nearness to us
• high albedo (reflectivity) due to constant cloud cover.

The iPad always surprises me, how well it captures scenes like this. Here's a closeup.  There is very little blurring of the planet due to movement of the Earth.