Venus is moving away from inferior opposition - when the planet is on the same side of the Sun as the Earth - but is growing brighter as more of its surface is illuminated. A week ago Venus was the closest planet to the Earth: just 25 million miles! (Astronomers always designate Mercury as the closest planet, since it is the nearest to the Sun and hence, on average, the closest to us and all the other planets!) In the pre-dawn sky Venus is a beautiful object: so bright it is still visible after sunrise.
At the other end of the day, the waning Moon rises just after sunset: by definition it is at its closest to us in the UK when it is full: around 250,000 miles away. Converting an image of the Moon into a negative really shows up the rays of material ejected when some of the more recent craters were formed.
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