Robert Doyle, age 15, of Ottawa, Ontario, for his question:

What is the name of the morning star?

We all got up early to welcome this, the most wonderful day of the year. Many of us went to church to worship, for today is the Birthday of the Baby Jesus. If we were out at dawn and the skies were clears vie saw a bright morning star in the east. Perhaps we wondered whether this was the bright star which led the Wise Men to Bethlehem almost 2,000 years ago: Actually, this does not matter at all, For that star was a miracle to herald the greatest of all miracles, which was the birth of Jesus.

On this Christmas morning, the morning star was the planet Venus. It rose in the east a few hours before the sun. For a while it was the brightest lamp in the heavens, six times brighter than Sirius which is the brightest of all stars. Then the sun reached its long dazzling beams above the horizon and lit up the atmosphere high above our heads. The sky became light, bright enough to out‑dazzle the stars One by one they paled dimmed and disappeared. Finally, only the bright morning star was left shining. Then it too dimmed and vanished before the sun lifted his golden crown above the horizon.

This bright morning star is not really a star at all. It is a cool, solid planet, like our earth, and it gives forth no light of its own. Its golden light is merely the reflected glory of the sun. Venus is shrouded with clouds so dense that no telescopc has ever pierced them. We have pictures of the surface of Mars, but none of the surface of Venus. The dense, fuzzy atmosphere is one reason why Venus is so bright, Another reason is because Venus comes closer to the earth than any other planet.

All the planets orbit the sun as the earth does and one trip around its orbit is a planet’s year. The year of Venus is equal to 225 earth days.  Earth's year is about 365 days and a Martian year is about 687 days.  All the planets are constantly catching up and passing each other as they orbit around and around the sun. They are forever moving against a background of the constant Mars and for this reason the ancient star‑gazers called them planets, which means wanderers.

There are times when a planet appears in the western sky at sunset. It shows its bright light as soon as the sun dips below the horizon and we call it the evening star. At curtain times the role of the evening star is played by Venus, Mars, Jupiter or Saturn. It so happens that tonight no planet will be playing the role of the evening star, Any one of these bright planets can also play the role of the morning star as golden Venus played it this Christmas morning.