Astronomy Question- Trying to identify star/planet in night sky.

[CatherineZeta]

I live in NYC and was walking in the downtown direction in Harlem where there’s a decent amount of light pollution, but not so much as in midtown, and I noticed an extremely bright star in the sky…it was actually the brightest object in the sky at that time (the moon wasn’t visible). Because it was so bright I’m thinking it was Mars or Venus, but according to websites I’ve found on Google, Mars is brightest in January and Venus is a “morning star.” Maybe it could have been Mercury which supposedly appears in November, and it’s going to be November tomorrow (this happened a few nights ago)?

I’m bad spatially…I think “south” in NYC is actually southwest or something because the island’s at an angle, and the “star” was a little bit to the left of me.

Just curious if anyone has any ideas as to what I saw!

This was inspired by the Milky Way thread…usually the NYC area is so bright that few if any stars are visible, but I have seen the Milky Way from Brooklyn which was pretty cool.

[Joey_P]

Do you by any chance have a smart phone? If you do, download Google Skymap, it should be able to identify it pretty quickly.

[CatherineZeta]

I have a Blackberry…would it work on that? I try not to download too much fancy stuff because I’m a cheapskate.

[Squink]

Halloween evening this year is moonless, with brilliant Jupiter lording it over the southern sky.

This Week’s Sky at a Glance

[Joey_P]

No, now that I look at it, it’s just for the Android. Besides, it needs a GPS and an accelerometer to work. But check out Google Sky and see if you can figure it out from there.

[CatherineZeta]

Thanks guys! Those star maps are so confusing to me…it must have been Jupiter though…or it remains a mystery.

The funny thing is, my dad used to be an astrophysicist and I took astronomy in high school…we’d sit in a planetarium and memorize the constellations for every month…now I can only pick out Orion. I know the Big Dipper but I’ve never seen it.

[standingwave]

Jupiter, most likely. It’s close to due south in the early evening right now and is quite bright.

http://www.skymaps.com/skymaps/tesmn1011.pdf

[GuanoLad]

Looking at the “Stellarium” app, it was definitely Jupiter, south-east at 10pm in NY. It is also currently very near to Uranus, though you can’t see Uranus with the naked eye.

[Malacandra]

@GuanoLad

Looking at the “Stellarium” app, it was definitely Jupiter, south-east at 10pm in NY. It is also currently very near to Uranus, though you can’t see Uranus with the naked eye.

No, you need a mirror.

[Olentzero]

@GuanoLad

It is also currently very near to Uranus, though you can’t see Uranus with the naked eye.

A road map is usually sufficient for most people.

[KarlGauss]

@CatherineZeta

Thanks guys! Those star maps are so confusing to me…it must have been Jupiter though…or it remains a mystery.

Definitely Jupiter. But the reason I am posting this isn’t to tell you that for the 3rd time. Rather, now that you know it’s Jupiter and will be able to spot it immediately for the next while, I urge you to take a peek at it through binoculars. Any pair will do, even real cheapies.

Viewing Jupiter with any optical aid will reveal four of its moons. It’s neat to follow their path around Jupiter over hours or days and I always thought it was nothing short of miraculous that their (predicted) positions can be looked up even years in advance. It epitomizes what renaissance and enlightenment scientists meant by a “clockwork universe”. And, don’t forget, using his brand spanking-new telescope to look at Jupiter, Galileo realized that the Earth could not be the center of the universe - otherwise how could moons revolve around Jupiter.

Again, I urge you - take a look at Jupiter using (any) binoculars. The moons are awesome!

[GuanoLad]

I can’t tell Uranus from my elbow.

[Munch]

@CatherineZeta

and Venus is a “morning star.”

It’s also the “evening star”. Since it’s close to the Sun (give or take 65 million miles), you see it best before sunrise or after sunset.

[Xema]

@KarlGauss

The moons are awesome!

It’s also noteworthy that they move rapidly - their positions look different from one hour to the next.

It’s said that someone with exceptional vision can see them without binocs.

[Dave.B]

I actually took a photo of Jupiter last month from my back garden. DSLR with 200mm lens. Ropey photo, but it does illustrate how easy the moons are to pick out:
http://www.davebellamy.co.uk/images/Misc/Jupiter.JPG
There are actually 4 moons visible in the full sized photo, and Uranus is visible as a faint green smudge above Jupiter.

[Galileo]

Some fascinating stuff at The Galileo Project: Longitude at Sea:

In 1612 Galileo for the first time observed an eclipse of a satellite of Jupiter. When a satellite enters the shadow cone behind the planet it disappears very quickly. Such eclipses were, for all practical purposes, instantaneous events. If a navigator on the high seas could note the local time of such an eclipse and compare it with the local time at which it was predicted to happen at the European reference location, the difference in times and therefore longitude could easily be found.

But,

In order to observe the satellites, one needed a telescope of relatively high power, say 15, and given the small field of view of the Galilean telescope (perhaps 20’ of arc) it was impossible to make the observation from the deck of a ship on the high seas.

Anyway,

If it was not feasible to make observations from the deck of a moving ship, it was certainly possible to observe the satellites on land. In the 1670s French astronomers, under the leadership of Cassini, began making observations of the satellites in many locations in France. The resulting map of France, finished in 1679 showed that the west coast of France was too far west by an entire degree on existing maps and that similar adjustments had to be made to the Mediterranean coast. It is said that upon seeing this map, King Louis XIV remarked that he was losing more territory to his astronomers than to his enemies.

And, even this:

It was because of Cassini’s tables that the Danish astronomer Olaeus Rømer was able, in 1676, to find a systematic error of about 10 minutes, whose period was equal to the synodic period (opposition to opposition) of Jupiter. Rømer correctly interpreted his result to demonstrate that light does not travel instantaneously. He estimated that it took eleven minutes for light from the Sun to reach the Earth.

[Sateryn76]

@KarlGauss

Definitely Jupiter. But the reason I am posting this isn’t to tell you that for the 3rd time. Rather, now that you know it’s Jupiter and will be able to spot it immediately for the next while, I urge you to take a peek at it through binoculars. Any pair will do, even real cheapies.

Viewing Jupiter with any optical aid will reveal four of its moons. It’s neat to follow their path around Jupiter over hours or days and I always thought it was nothing short of miraculous that their (predicted) positions can be looked up even years in advance. It epitomizes what renaissance and enlightenment scientists meant by a “clockwork universe”. And, don’t forget, using his brand spanking-new telescope to look at Jupiter, Galileo realized that the Earth could not be the center of the universe - otherwise how could moons revolve around Jupiter.

Again, I urge you - take a look at Jupiter using (any) binoculars. The moons are awesome!

I will back this up - seeing Jupiter through my cheapy telescope was the coolest thing I have ever seen in the night sky. I was able to very briefly see stripes!

Very cool…

[Malacandra]

@Munch

It’s also the “evening star”. Since it’s close to the Sun (give or take 65 million miles), you see it best before sunrise or after sunset.

But with Venus, as opposed to Mercury, the angle it makes with Earth and Sun can be enough to give you a window of several hours. Not too many years back we had a spectacular line-up when Venus, Jupiter and the crescent Moon were close enough to make a “smiley face” in the sky.

[kenobi_65]

@Munch

It’s also the “evening star”. Since it’s close to the Sun (give or take 65 million miles), you see it best before sunrise or after sunset.

In fact, those are usually the only times you can see it. Since Venus’s orbit is closer to the Sun than the Earth’s orbit, it’s always “close to the sun”, from the perspective of a viewer here on earth. Venus will never appear to be more than about 48 degrees away from the Sun.

During periods in which Venus is the “evening star” (i.e., it appears, to us, to be trailing the Sun across the sky), Venus will set not too long after the Sun does. During periods in which Venus is the “morning star” (i.e., it appears to be preceding the Sun across the sky), it’ll rise not too long before the Sun does.

So, if you see a very bright “star” after sunset, if it’s not in the western sky (i.e., fairly close to where the Sun just appeared to set), it’s not Venus.

[SCSimmons]

@CatherineZeta

Because it was so bright I’m thinking it was Mars or Venus, but according to websites I’ve found on Google, Mars is brightest in January and Venus is a “morning star.” Maybe it could have been Mercury which supposedly appears in November, and it’s going to be November tomorrow (this happened a few nights ago)?

Just in case it’s not clear from the rest of the discussion: Mercury is even more of a ‘Morning (or Evening) Star’ than Venus–you’ll never get a good view of it other than just before sunrise or just after sunset. A moment’s thought about the geometry of the solar system should explain why …