What’s that bright “star” in the sky after sunset? Stargazers worldwide have been treated to the first glorious night sky sight of 2025 — a panorama of bright planet Venus and a delicate crescent moon.
Best viewed on Jan. 3, the duo appeared to be a couple of degrees from each other and dominated the post-sunset night sky in the southwest for a couple of hours before sinking into the horizon. After the sun and the moon, the planet Venus is the brightest astronomical object in the night sky.
The close conjunction of Venus and a crescent moon will be visible once more this year: mark your calendars for Saturday, Feb. 1. However, there are plenty of other highlights in the night sky in 2025.
Venus is shining brightly as it approaches its closest to Earth next month. However, the delicate crescent moon grabbed the spotlight by displaying “planet-shine” on its dark limb, and sunlight first strikes Earth before being reflected onto the moon.
The ethereal sight — also called Earthshine, Earthlight and Da Vinci glow (named after Leonardo da Vinci, who described it in the 15th century) — can only be seen in the few nights on either side of the new moon when the moon appears in the night sky as a crescent.
Although it works both ways — strong moonlight causes shadows at night on Earth — planet shine is a consequence of sunlight reflecting off Earth’s ice caps, clouds and oceans.
Research in 2021 revealed a significant drop in Earth’s reflectance, or albedo, over the past two decades after a reduction in bright, reflective, low-lying clouds over the eastern Pacific Ocean in recent years. That’s exactly where increases in sea surface temperatures have been recorded because of the reversal of a climatic condition called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
The moon, just 13%-lit, is beginning its latest orbit around the Earth. The final day of 2024 saw our natural satellite as a rare black moon, the second of two new moons in the same month. A quirk of the calendar, a black moon is a rare but inevitable consequence of a new moon every 29.5 days.
Venus, meanwhile — shining as a brilliant “Evening Star” — will soon cause another sensation. On Saturday, Jan. 18, Venus and Saturn will be in close conjunction, again in the southwest, just after sunset. However, the second planet from the sun will shine far brighter than the sixth.
Venus is currently coming closer to Earth, which is why it is getting brighter. Venus orbits the sun every 225 days and, in any eight years, appears to orbit the sun 13 times from Earth’s point of view.
It will reach its brightest in Earth’s sky on Feb. 16, but if you have a small telescope, it’s worth watching it before that as it shrinks to a crescent — something only inner planets appear to do, as seen from Earth.
On Jan. 11, Venus will reach its dichotomy, when it will be just 50%-illuminated. Between then and March 22, when it sinks into the sun’s glare, Venus will gradually shrink to a crescent, just as the moon appears to do. At the end of January, it will be about 40%-lit and just 23%-lit by mid-to-late February, while it’s still easy to see in the post-sunset night sky.
Shooting stars were visible shortly after the sight of the moon and Venus dissipated. Caused by 2003 EH1, a mystery object that NASA says could be a “rock comet,” the annual Quadrantid meteor shower peaks with dozens of shooting stars per hour.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
