It’ll soon be Valentine’s Day, so what makes a great romantic gift? A book of poetry? A candlelight dinner? Excellent choices — but as a nightcap, there's nothing like a moonlight or starlit stroll. So if it's a very late date or if you and your beloved wake up just as morning twilight begins and gaze out an east facing window, the Morning Star will be totally, absolutely riveting, although very low. And look at that little orange star next to it — that’s Mars, as if the male and female aspects of the heavens are dancing.

Radiation penetrates our bodies 24/7. Most is natural, with background cosmic ray doses proportional to your home’s elevation. These broken pieces of atoms zooming in from space, give you 30 millirems of annual radiation if you live near sea level, like in L.A. But you get much more if your home is up high. People in Denver get 80 millirems yearly.

Do you still keep your old binoculars in the same drawer as your socks? And are you psyched to glimpse the green planet Uranus?

According to the U.N., most of us live in cites rather than rural regions. The switchover arrived in 2007. Which brings up the rural night’s main illumination – the Moon. We now know that lunar brightness doubles 2.5 days before Full Moon, which is a big deal if you need a little extra light to complete outdoor rural work. After all, a Half Moon is only a tenth as bright as a Full Moon, not enough to be fully useful.

Saturn wins the Miss Universe contest. For anyone who's ever seen it through a telescope, there are hardly any runners-up. Saturn’s just a knockout, and even 60 power is plenty to show it well. Tune in for the best time to see the planet in action.

This will be a great year in the night sky, one of the best of our lives. So get ready to scrawl some stuff on your calendar. Tune in to hear what and when you can catch the biggest sky events of the year, including a very close conjunction between two of our favorite planets.

Orion and its famous belt points down to the brightest star, Sirius. Being the most brilliant object in the Big Dog constellation it’s naturally called the Dog Star, and by amazing coincidence it hovers at its highest, perfectly due south, at exactly midnight on each New Year’s Eve. Hear how to catch the two brightest stars in the sky.

A supernova is the biggest explosion that ever lights up the modern universe, and happens around once a century in each of the hundreds of billions of galaxies in the cosmos. Tune in to hear about the sun and if it can go "supernova."

All this week we’re viewing crescent moons that grow fatter each evening. The crescent may be the Moon’s most fascinating phase.

This week we’ll see the year’s best meteor shower! They are the Geminids, and they deliver a meteor a minute. Tune in to hear what the conditions will be like for those away from the city lights.