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There was a celestial sight pretty enough to adorn a Christmas tree on Monday evening as the planet Venus shone prominently in the vicinity of a lovely crescent moon - and it will repeat on Tuesday night, too.

The event occurred in the south-southwest sky shortly after the sunset.

The eye-catching duo quickly descended as the sky darkened, finally setting about 2 1/2 hours after sunset, beyond the southwest horizon.

According to Joe Rao of Space.com, Venus shines at magnitude -4 on the scale that astronomers use to measure and object's brightness. On the scale, the lower the magnitude number, the brighter the object appears. On this scale Venus is 11 times brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky.

Venus is currently 123 million miles from the Earth, but the moon is only about 235,000 miles away, and as a result appears to move much more rapidly against the background stars than Venus.

If the sky is mostly clear with little or no haze, check the south-southwest sky during the late afternoon hours of Tuesday before sunset and try to locate the moon.
Read more at Space.com.