On the way home from work tonight, I noticed in the roughly northern part of the sky a large bright light. From the way it looked, and the fact that it didn't seem to be moving, I figured that it was probably a jet heading straight for my direction. I just came back in from taking out the trash and the light hasn't moved. It's been more than an hour since I first spotted it, so it's not a plane (obviously), and I don't think that it's Venus, since it's about four times the size of any of the stars in the sky, and Venus, I don't think, appears significantly larger than most stars.

I don't think that it's the ISS, as it's usually in a different part of the sky when I can see it. Iridium flares don't last this long AFAIK. In looking at it with the wimpy pair of binoculars that I have, I couldn't see anything that gave me any clues as to what it might be. So, anyone know? Should I be on the lookout for three guys on camels carrying presents?

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Tuckers! Automotive Oddities! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither. MachineCast Save the planet, by leaving it! "To be second in space is to be second in everything," LBJ.

Venus is a morning thing right now. Actually makes a for a nice view with Saturn and Regulus about 4-5 AM. Planets tend to come up in the east, then track along the southern sky the the west (Northern Hemisphere). Unlikley to have been a planet in the northern sky.

What time did you see this? (Local time for you with time zone)
How far above the horizon?
How are you sure it didn't move?
Was it to the left or right of due north?

Edit to add: Yesterday's APOD

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Hmm.. I think it's Venus .

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Jean
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"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." - Albert Einstein

"The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge " - Bertrand Russell

Venus is way brighter than any star, and so it appears to be larger. But from Tennessee, Venus would only appear in the ENE to SE at dawn (as it is now) or WNW to SW at dusk. Never far to the north. None of the other planets would be in TN's north sky.

The ISS would not stay in view for an hour. You would notice it moving after only a few seconds.

Have you been able to spot it on following nights?

Fred

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Capella is to the northeast late at night (it's bright and yellow).

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

Yes, Capella often surprises people when it is low in the sky because they don't expect to see a first mag star that far north.

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Yes. I vote for Capella too. It rises about 9:30 PM now.

And if seeing this bright star in the sky makes you sing out (without instrumental accompaniment), would you be singing Ah Capella?

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Actually, I only noticed it last night, but I'll check tonight to see if it's there. And I was wrong about the portion of the sky it was in, it was the Eastern part of the sky, almost 180 degrees from where the sun sets. It seemed too big and too bright to be Venus, though. This looked identical the landing lights of a jet in both terms of size and intensity, through my binocs, it almost looked like 4 lights close together.

Tog_, I first noticed it about 3:30 AM CDT, as for how far above the horizon, I can't really say as the area I live in is basically at the bottom of a soup bowl, so the horizon's higher than it would be in a flatter area. I was able to tell that it hadn't moved significantly due to it's placement above certain local landmarks. It's appearance was so unusual in the sky (I've been getting home at about the same time of day for about a decade now) that I was wondering if it wasn't something the Russians had put up there as a way to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Spuntik.

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We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04 K.I.L.L. S.M.U.R.F.S.
Tuckers! Automotive Oddities! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither. MachineCast Save the planet, by leaving it! "To be second in space is to be second in everything," LBJ.

Yeah good ol' "Spuntik"... Those were the days

BTW, great censorship in the title.
Saw Arcturus again over my school a few minutes ago.
Almost made up for freezing my butt off protecting the power cable from pranksters at Homecoming.
Almost...

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Venus.

Ok, I have Starry Night up.

3:30am, eastern part of sky--Sirius is up in the southeast, then but fairly low (bright white, brightest star at night, bluish tint, right below Orion at this time). Procyon is higher than Sirius and bright but less bright. Mars is up high, bright and orange. Aldebaran is less bright, still fairly high, and orange.

Venus is still below the horizon, but rising soon.

Capella is to the east at that time, bright yellow.

(right now, 10:15pm here, wait an hour for Texas, Capella is up in the northeast, not all that high but still brighter than anything else in that part of the sky, as I just confirmed by looking out my front door).

3:30 till dawn is a good time to observe if it's clear--lots of good stuff up--Orion and all its nebula and clusters, Auriga and all its clusters, Gemini with Mars and M35, Cancer with the beehive, pleiades, hyades, Andromeda Galaxy is still pretty high, Triangulum Galaxy is well positioned for viewing, the "winter" Milky Way is out, the double cluster is in a good position for observing.

I.e. it's just like January at 9pm, but warmer.

Todd


Todd

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

OT . . .

Todd,

Do you like Starry Night? I use RedShift4, which I bought 6-7 years ago, but have been looking for something else.

RedShift4 shows Venus right next to Saturn tomorrow morning and about 8-9 degrees above the horizon at 3:30 AM. Keep in mind this is for Tucson.

Tuckerman,

Where one is located in their time zone will also make a difference as to what is visible at a certain local time. For example, if I'm located on the far west of my time zone and you are located in the time zone just east of me but you live in the far east of your time zone, then what we each see at local time 3:30 AM will be different - almost an hour different. It's much more precise to use Universal Time (UT) for an event and use your longitude to determine the local time that corresponds with the UT.

Tim

I'd go with Venus.

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Mostly I like Starry Night. There are Vista issues--if you have the older XP dvd/cd, you install in XP compatibility mode first, then patch it, but even with the latest Starry Night patch, better have your graphics card and Vista well-patched too.

It's pretty good and mostly intuitive. There are some annoying things--long startup time, if you turn too many things on at once it slows way down, it uses lots of memory/CPU power, and some options are hard to find (they are not all in one place).

It is extensible (though the documentation was sparse on how, but trial and error mostly worked--I added a user database of "Astro League Open Cluster Club", but it shows the open clusters as planetary nebulae because I got some secret code wrong in the text file, but I decided, close enough for finding things).

It works with my GoTo telescope too--though sometimes there are funny states where the hand controller thinks it's pointed in one place and Starry Night thinks it's pointed another place and I'm afraid to hit "sync" since the wrong one might be copied over to the wrong one and I have to realign as a result--can't remember which direction "sync" sends the data.

Todd

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

How da heck do I do that without a GPS and/or sextant?

Oh, and what I saw last night wasn't near Orion at all (I can recognize his belt and a few other stars in the constellation). Directly (or purt near) overhead was what I presume to be Mars, since it was bright and red. Whatever was so bright last night that I saw was orders of magnatude brighter than anything else in the sky. It's been rare that I've even seen the Moon as bright.

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We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04 K.I.L.L. S.M.U.R.F.S.
Tuckers! Automotive Oddities! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither. MachineCast Save the planet, by leaving it! "To be second in space is to be second in everything," LBJ.

Okay, I just had a look outside and there's nothing in the sky in the area where I saw the bright light last night, and nothing in the sky anywhere near as bright as what I saw. I'll check a little bit later to see if it shows up. (It's now almost exactly 24 hours since I last saw it.)

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We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04 K.I.L.L. S.M.U.R.F.S.
Tuckers! Automotive Oddities! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither. MachineCast Save the planet, by leaving it! "To be second in space is to be second in everything," LBJ.

I'm willing to bet it wasn't Venus, etc.
Most of us stargazers are familiar with what would "normally" be there.

It's a good chance what you saw was artificially produced. Could be many things and you may never know...

You can look on just about any map to get your longitude (and latitude for that matter). Then it's an easy matter to subtract/add to the UT value.

The Sky and Telescope website (and many others I assume) will give you this info if you enter the city where you live.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Time

weather balloon?

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the solar system

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Flare?

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Jean
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"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." - Albert Einstein

"The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge " - Bertrand Russell

No...just Venus.

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Some one else said it here on the forum but it certainly is true:

You can answer every thread that asks 'What is that bright object in the sky?" with the answer "Venus" without even reading the opening post and you'd be correct 90 percent of the time.

I'll admit I was a bit "thrown" earlier in the thread when Tuckerfan said (that what he saw) was to the North, but when he corrected himself (and said due east) it really left no doubt as to what he was seeing.

And in his last post where he said that there was...

He should have mentioned a very bright Venus in addition to what he saw...but he doesn't.

Having said all that, Venus is very bright in the pre-dawn sky. Heck, I know what I'm looking at (I see it almost every morning), and I'm still amazed at how bright it is.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Unfortunately, I'm up at 5:00 AM every workday and I see it too. It sure is pretty.

He said he first noticed it at 3:30 in the (corrected) east. At that time, in Gallatin TN, Venus would have been just 3 or 4 degrees above the horizon, and the horizon illusion would be kicking in. The next day, when he looked around 4:30, he didn't notice "the object", even though Venus would be higher in the sky. Interesting.

That's because there wasn't anything in the sky even approaching the level of what I saw. Now, last night/this morning, I looked out at roughly the same time, and there was a bright object in about the same area of the sky, but it wasn't as large or as bright as I what I had seen previously. So now, the question is: Does the level of brightness of Venus match what I've seen, with it being, "Holy flinging fecal matter, Batman" bright one night, then "Blend in with everything else" bright, the next, followed by "Slightly brighter than everything else" bright on the third?

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We want our children to go to the planets. Burt Rutan 6/21/04 K.I.L.L. S.M.U.R.F.S.
Tuckers! Automotive Oddities! Building my hot rod with the help of the intarwebs Those who would delay scientific progress for a little temporary prosperity shall have neither. MachineCast Save the planet, by leaving it! "To be second in space is to be second in everything," LBJ.