Here's a shot of Venus and Mars taken before the Sun rises. They are very nice morning stars, Venus is very bright in the morning sky however Mars is very hard to find as it rises much latter just before Sunrise. This photo was taken on the 9th of November.
The planet Venus is about 1.29 AU from Earth now, you'll see it as a very strong morning star and its phases is about 82% finished by the end of Nov' it will be about 89%. Mars is very difficult to spot, it's about 2.6 Au from Earth or maybe 390 million kilometres away. Because of the orbits of the Earth and Mars , the red planet will only come into opposition roughly once every two years and 2 months. For backyard astronomers and space agency workers like NASA scientists this is very important, because stargazers can spot the planet much better when its close and Space people have a nice window of opportunity for launching craft. In November of 2005 it will be at opposition with a distance of 70 million km from Earth, its disk size will be much larger and the magnitude much stronger.
So far we have 2 NASA craft around Mars , Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey,
Europe has the ESA Mars Express orbiter, plus NASA also has the great rovers taking great shots of the surface.
The European Agency plans to re-use elements of Rosetta and ESA's Mars Express for it's Venus mission. The Russians have already put a lander on Venus , the craft Venera 7 landed and transmitted for 23 mins after arrival. Nasa's Magellan mission launched from the Atlantis shuttle got some fantastic info about the Planet but the mission ended in 1994
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