A thin crescent moon appears close to the brilliant planet Venus on Monday. It is an early morning event. Anyone outside before 5 a.m. will enjoy this close lineup.

This is one of those pretty morning astronomical events that will help jog your thinking towards the naturalist’s Christmas holiday spirit. Stars, planets and the moon all contribute to the nighttime panorama of winter. An appearance of the moon with the brightest planet in our night sky always helps.

On Tuesday morning, the crescent moon appears under Venus, considerably lower and farther away but still a pretty sight.
 

Capella

One of the noted stars rising in the early evening sky almost looks bright enough to be a planet. Capella is brilliant and in many respects more interesting than any of our solar system’s planets. Capella is in the constellation Auriga, the charioteer. You’ll see the bright star rising in the northeast after sunset. At nine o’clock it is high in the sky and has a yellowish tint.

To astronomers Capella is really two giant stars caught together for all time, with two more. The biggest two are a pair, each one at least ten times bigger than our own sun and they are circling each other in a perpetual dance. Add two more, two dwarfs, not too far away. Light coming from these stars takes 42 years to get here, which in our Milky Way neighborhood means they are relatively close.