Planets bright and modest gathered in the evening sky in early 2017.  Venus is less than a week away from starting its retrograde loop into inferior conjunction Mars is still speeding along the ecliptic trying to stay ahead of the Sun, and slow Uranus is off in the distance, barely moving in comparison to the terrestrial planets.  Venus is magnitude -4.61, Mars is +1.28, and Uranus is +5.88 this evening.  Unannotated image, Planets Labeled