And Venus, a magnificent silvery-white celestial lantern of magnitude -4.5, will hover to the bottom left of the lunar crescent. The distance between the two items will be quite large—about 7 degrees, or almost three-quarters of the apparent width of your fist held at arm’s length.

Although these two objects won’t be coming very close together, their immense brightness makes them a striking sight in the early morning sky.What we are witnessing is, of course, a perspective illusion. Venus is 259 times farther away from Earth on this morning at 58.5 million miles (94.1 million km), whereas the moon is 225,700 miles (363,300 km). On June