Roughly four weeks ago, I met somebody completely new. It was four in the morning and I was looking into the starry reflections of a puddle, when I was knocked into it. I opened my eyes and somebody stood over me, with his hand outstretched. He apologised profusely, helped me up and flicked a few wet leaves off of my back. I asked him what he was doing, and he told me he was stargazing. It suddenly struck me that he looked very familiar.

He told me that he was trying to see as much of Venus as he could before it fell below the horizon, and he had been following it so closely that he had been running down the street with his telescope planted firmly to his eye. Venus, he told me, due to its orbit laying between Earth and the Sun, can only be seen for a while before the Sun rises, or after it sets. Despite this, the morning star, as he called it, was the third brightest object in our sky.

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