Our three closest celestial neighbors highlight the early evening sky tonight – the Moon and the planets Venus and Mercury. Venus is the brilliant “evening star.” Fainter Mercury stands well below the Moon. It looks like a bright star, but it’s so low in the sky that it’s easy to miss.

The Moon is the closest neighbor. It orbits Earth once every four weeks, at an average distance of less than a quarter of a million miles.

Venus and Mercury are our closest planetary neighbors. Mercury is the nearest planet to the Sun, Venus is second, and Earth is third. So Venus passes closer to Earth than any other planet – as little as 24 million miles away. Combined with its size and its unbroken cloud cover, that makes Venus the brightest object in the night sky other than the Moon.

Mercury passes as little as 50 million miles from Earth. Mars can actually come closer than that. But on average, Mercury is much closer than Mars. In fact, the average distance to Mercury and Venus is the same – about 93 million miles.

If you know the layout of the solar system, that number may sound familiar – it’s the average distance from Earth to the Sun. But it’s also the average distance to any object that stays inside Earth’s orbit.

Mercury is climbing away from the Sun as seen from Earth now, while Venus is dropping toward the Sun. They’ll pass each other in about 10 days, lining up side by side in the evening twilight.

Script by Damond Benningfield