Identifying Planets

It's only recently, through observation of the sky (and involvement with my kids) that I realized that you can identify planets at night partly because they are (generally? - besides the moon, not sure if there are other exceptions) the first objects you can see after the sun goes down.

I don't usually do a lot of observation in the pre-dawn sky, but I happened to be up early and had to take a peek. A really bright object was in the southeastern sky - it seemed almost too bright to be a planet.

Turns out it was Venus. Wow!

Here is a website to help you identify what planets are visible according to time-of-year.