Everyone on Earth is welcome to a solar system party, being held in the skies near you.
The planets Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune are all converging in one area of the sky, just a few degrees away from one another, in the south west, right after sunset. Tiny Mercury is nearby too, peering in on it's larger brothers and sisters, but hiding itself shyly on the other side of the Sun. It is setting before the Sun, so that by the time the Sun sets, Mercury is well over the horizon.
Venus,
long thought to be the twin of Earth, is by far the brightest of these planetary
objects. Look to the southwest soon after sunset, and you will easily see
Venus as the brightest object in the area. In fact, Venus is so bright,
it is the third brightest object visible from Earth, dimmer only than the
Sun and Moon as seen from our home world.
Venus is about the size and mass of the Earth, yet it is a world full of poisonous gases, searing temperatures, and crushing pressures. When it rains on Venus, it is a rain of sulfuric acid, dissolving most anything which had not already imploded and melted. If those things don't ruin your vacation plans for Venus this winter, the trip might be worthwhile. The temperatures are so hot, the rocks are all partly melted, and would change shape before your eyes. The atmosphere is so dense (90 times as dense as on the Earth), that you would be able to strap wings to your arms and fly. However, given the temperatures on Venus, you should be careful what you make your wings out of, or you could suffer the same fate as Icarus!
That bright light just to the south, and
a little above Venus, is the mighty planet Jupiter. Long considered by both
the Greeks and Romans to be the king of the Gods, Jupiter is more massive
than all the other planets combined. It is surrounded by over twenty moons;
one of which, at least, is showing signs of possibly being compatible with
life as we know it. 
The moon Europa (which can be seen by any backyard telescope) has now been shown to have oceans of liquid water, and a substantial oxygen atmosphere. The findings have excited scientists to such a degree, that the Galileo spacecraft which was orbiting Jupiter studying it, has had it's orbit changed so that it can concentrate on the moons of Europa and Io. Io (pronounced eye-oo) is a world of active, glow in the dark volcanoes, and has tides on it's surface 30 meters (100 feet) high.
To the west and a little below Venus lies a smaller, dimmer, red
dot. This is the planet Mars. Mars (needless to say) has attracted perhaps
more attention than any other planet. The whole idea of possible alien life
forms was, for many years, almost synononous with the word Martian.
In the 1970's, the United States launched
two landers to the surface of Mars, the Viking probes, and those were highly
informative, and useful. The Mars Pathfinder mission this year was a tremendous
success, and the Mars Global Surveyor, which has just arrived at Mars, will
orbit the planet, mapping it for years, and then will be used as a communications
relay for future robotic landers on Mars. If all goes as planned, humans
will first set foot on Mars in the year 2012. 
Back to Jupiter, and towards the west, and down a few degrees lay the planets Uranus and Neptune. These frozen worlds are the most distant large objects in our solar system which we know about. Although both are invisible to the naked eye, Uranus can be seen with even a pair of binoculars. Neptune is a little trickier to find, but is still easy enough to find by an amateur astronomer in dark skies, even with modest equipment.
Clear skies, and good viewing.
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