It's been quite a year for stargazing.

There's been a lot of great conjunctions. The best one was just a few weeks ago when the crescent moon had a beautiful dance with the bright planets Jupiter and Venus. While it won't be a repeat performance, there's going to be another great celestial hugging this week involving the new crescent moon, Venus, Jupiter, and as an added attraction, the planet Mercury. They will all be available for your perusal in the evening twilight and will put on a very special show on New Year's Eve!

Just as it was earlier this month, this week's conjunction maneuvers can be seen very early in the evening — and I mean early. Start looking in the south-southwestern sky from about half an hour to an hour after sunset. For the Butler area, that will be from about 5:30 to 6 p.m. Don't look much later than that or you'll lose Jupiter and Mercury as they slip below the horizon.

On Monday night, the show really gets going as the very bright planet Venus pops out of hiding in the southwest sky.

There's no mistaking it. It's by far the brightest starlike object in the sky. As you can see in the diagram, just off to the lower right of Venus will be a very thin crescent moon, and to the lower right of the sliver of moon will be two more planets — Jupiter and Mercury will be doing a very close tango just above the horizon. It should be quite a sight.

You'll probably need a very low, flat treeless horizon to see Jupiter and Venus. You might have to relocate to a hilltop. Jupiter is just above Mercury and is the brighter of the two, but neither is as brilliant as Venus.

Tuesday evening, during twilight, you'll see that the crescent moon will be a little fatter and will be shining about halfway between Venus and the Jupiter-Mercury duo.

Every 24 hours, the moon shifts its position about 13 degrees eastward among the stars as it orbits the Earth every 27 days. Also, a little more of the sun's light is hitting the side of the moon that faces Earth, making the crescent a little fatter. If the sky is clear enough, you might not only see the sunlit slice of the moon, but you also might see the rest of the moon's disk bathed in a pale grayish light.

This is called earthshine because that's what it truly is. The part of the moon's disk not lit up directly by the sun is reflecting secondhand sunlight that is bouncing off the earth and onto the moon. It makes for really nice eye candy!

The celestial hugging culminates Wednesday evening, New Year's Eve, shortly after the sun sets for the last time in 2008.

As you're getting ready to party in 2009, you'll see Venus shining just below the crescent moon. They will be only two degrees apart. Meanwhile, to the lower right, closer to the horizon, Jupiter and Mercury will have drawn even closer to each other, separated by only a degree, which is about the width of your finger held at arm's length. The actual distance between the two planets Wednesday night is more than 450 million miles, but the largest planet in our solar system and the smallest planet just happen to be in the same line of sight.

Unfortunately, except for the moon, none of the planets are all that great through a telescope. All you'll see with Venus is a very bright cloud-covered oval-ish disk. Mercury and Jupiter are very close to the horizon and will be super fuzzy through any telescope. All celestial objects fuzz out when they're close to the horizon because we're forced to look through a lot more of Earth's blurring atmosphere. You might see some of Jupiter's moons, though.

I have one more celestial assignment for you on New Year's Eve.

Once you ring in 2009 at midnight and get all those New Year's kisses and handshakes, step away from your partying and look for a very bright star above the southern horizon. It's the brightest star in our night sky anytime of the year, and right around New Year's, it reaches its highest point in the heavens at midnight.

Sirius is a star about twice the size of the sun, and it's about 50 trillion miles away!

Happy starry New Year!

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is author of the book, "Pennsylvania Starwatch," available at bookstores and at his Web site www.lynchandthestars.com.