Bright star in west

ronbyrne2005

What is the bright star/planet in western sky visable in early evening(6pm'ish) at present?

Redshift

It's probably venus you're seeing

Saruman

He said early evening Of course i may be wrong but i thought it was only a before sunrise kind of star.
I would say its Jupiter.. possibly Saturn but most likely Jupiter as its a lot bigger and brighter.
Its so big in fact you can see the moons through a pair of 10x50 binoculars.

Zirconia

It is actually Venus, as Redshift suggested. It's currently magnitude -3.8, second only to the moon in brightness after dark at the moment.

Saruman

Yes i had just looked it up! Amazing i have never noticed Venus in the night sky before.... You learn something new every day

Kevster

Thanks for that. I noticed that bright object this evening when walking home from college and figured it was either Jupiter, Venus, or the ISS. The ISS is rarely visible from here (I think???) and is never that bright so I figured it was then most likely either of the aforementioned planets.

slade_x

Kevster wrote:

Thanks for that. I noticed that bright object this evening when walking home from college and figured it was either Jupiter, Venus, or the ISS. The ISS is rarely visible from here (I think???) and is never that bright so I figured it was then most likely either of the aforementioned planets.

Iridium satellites thanks to their solar panels can be expectionally bright in the night sky too, as well as being visible in the day also apparent magnitudes of up tp -9 or greater

jonski

This would be the really bright , blueish thing . west/south west . 30/35 % . 0:30 in the morning ??


Has a bit of a 'wow' factor about it , for people like me that haven't really noticed it before .

slade_x

jonski wrote:

This would be the really bright , blueish thing . west/south west . 30/35 % . 0:30 in the morning ??


Has a bit of a 'wow' factor about it , for people like me that haven't really noticed it before .

Are you talking about the brighter in the sky w/sw at the time of your post?

If so just above the orion nebula, would be orions belt, above orions belt would be betelgeuse, below orion nebula would be rigel. to the east of rigel/ orion nebula would be Sirius.

Actually looking west of betelgeuse is aldebaran. if you draw a line straight from these 2 and continue west the line runs under the pleiades. Or if you draw a line across the 3 stars in orion nebula to the west the line would pass almost right through the center of the pleiades

Kevster

Yeh, that would be Sirius alright but the original post was about the really bright 'star' that is visible at around 18:00. It appears brighter than Sirius and is in the opposite half of the sky from orion's belt. Look out for it tonight I suppose.


On this note, why the hell is the moon so bright these mornings?

ronbyrne2005

http://news.google.ie/news?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&tab=wn&q=Venus+sky

Yeah seems to be a good few articles about it in the news. Was in Clontarf at sunset yesterday and it was a great sight to see a wonderful sunset and such a bright diamond like sight in the sky.

The Hill Billy

Kevster wrote:

Thanks for that. I noticed that bright object this evening when walking home from college and figured it was either Jupiter, Venus, or the ISS. The ISS is rarely visible from here (I think???) and is never that bright so I figured it was then most likely either of the aforementioned planets.

The ISS wasn't visible from Ireland on 6th Feb. You can check out when it will next be visible at Heavens Above.

Flukey

It is Venus that you can see in the early evening just after sunset in the west. The ISS is not currently visible as stated, and when it is it is moving through the sky, taking a few minutes to cross it, first getting brighter and then slowly dimming, before disappearing.