Help please

[Hurdsey]

Hi everybody, my first post so please be gentle with me

I'm just trying to identify a particularly bright star/planet thats visible at the mo.

To help you, I live in Oldham about 12 miles from Manchester airport and almost dierectly under the approach flight path, so looking along the approach path (south) and probably about 30 degrees above the horizon is this star/planet, someone mentioned saturn, and I'd really like to know for sure, can anyone help me to identify this please.

[Kai]

Hi and welcome

I think you are looking at Venus if its visible at the moment.

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Almost certainly Venus mate. Due southish, and about 20 degrees up?

Kaptain Klevtsov

[themos]

Depends on what time you saw it. If around midnight, it could be Sirius, the dog-star. If it was near sunrise, Venus the sister planet.

[themos]

I am attaching a midnight view and a morning view, southern horizon, rendered by the Stellarium program.

[Hurdsey]

Thanks guys, it does seem brightest in the morning especially on these clear nights, I'll check again tonight and get my protractor and compass out.

[zootlewurdle]

Download Stellarium (which themos posted a couple of screen grabs of), it's free and pretty easy to use, it runs on Windows and Mac OSX (also Linux, but I've not personally tried that yet).

http://www.stellarium.org/

It's pretty easy to use, just remember to set the location as it defaults to Paris.

[themos]

I've tried it on Linux (SuSe 10.3 i386) and it's fine.

[LaVey]

if your using ubuntu its a simple package install 'sudo apt-get install stellarium'... works very well :_