It’s 6:58 pm in Washington, DC and I’m looking to the west. There is a huge object in the sky. I know it’s not a star, and there is only one of them. What is it?
The very luminous white thing? That’s Uranus and Venus in conjunction. Bright, innit?
Well, you’re certainly not seeing Uranus as a bright object. It is very near Venus right now, but Venus is nearly 10000 times brighter than Uranus. Uranus is not really visible to the naked eye, especially near a city.
What Fiddle Peghead is seeing right now is almost certainly Venus. It’s particularly conspicuous right now. That’s because it’s near its point of maximum brightness, and high enough in the sky to persist well after sunset. So it’s at that point in its orbit where people are noticing it a lot.
I’m a little confused by the OP’s use of the word “huge”. Venus is very bright now, but it’s still a point of light. Fiddle Peghead, are you talking about something that has a big apparent size…like larger than the moon?
Yeah, you’re right aerodave, Venus and Uranus are very close but not so close that they’d look like a single object even through a telescope. The “huge object” is certainly Venus, assuming that FP is talking about a celestial body at all.
Some more info about Venus, which I posted in **Fiddle Peghead’s **previous thread on this subject:
Weird, its almost exactly the same thread.
God, my mind must be going. I had completely forgotten about that other thread.
So is it the same object?
Expect a visit from some men in black suits soon.
I thought they wore white coats…