The first Moon-Venus pairing comes this Wednesday evening, November 29th. The thin Moon and the bright white planet will emerge into view in the southwestern sky soon after sunset and will grow more striking and beautiful as twilight deepens.

They're the two brightest objects in the evening sky. The best views will come in late twilight, when most of the light is gone from the sky but the Moon and planet have not yet sunk very low on their way to setting.

Although the Moon and Venus look like they're close together, they aren't. The Moon is currently 251,000 miles from Earth, but Venus is 96 million miles away -- almost 400 times farther in the background.

Exactly one month later on December 29, the Moon will have completed an orbit around the Earth and caught up to Venus once more. The two will again shine together in the southwest at dusk.

As nightfall becomes complete, look for a third object in their close vicinity: the rather faint (3rd-magnitude) star Delta Capricorni, also known as Deneb Algedi.

The Moon will be 252,000 miles away, and Venus will be 300 times farther at 76 million miles, but Delta Capricorni is 230 trillion miles away, 3 million times more distant than Venus.

To put this in perspective, the light you see from the Moon took 1.3 seconds to reach your eye, the light from Venus took 6.8 minutes, but the light from Delta Capricorni took 39 years.

Although the Moon comes and goes from night to night, Venus will continue to shine in the southwest or west every clear evening from November through the coming winter. The planet is getting higher and brighter with each passing week and will shine at its best in the evening skies of January and February.

Editor's Note: The text of this release applies to the Americas, Europe, and Africa only. In other parts of the world, the Moon and Venus will be less close together when twilight arrives.

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