Question about the Sky Last Night

[Smokey1875]

Hi everyone, this is my first visit and post to this site and I was hoping someone could help me. I hope it is ok to post this here.

I am a very inexperienced stargazer and I have a question about something I saw in the sky last night which intrigued me.

I live in the North West of England and about 2.30am this morning I noticed an extremely bright orange light in the sky, just above the horizon and a few degrees south of east.

I only have a pair of binoculars (10x50 wide angle, which means little to me!) but looking at the object was fascinating. It appeared much larger than any star I have seen before or what I have been led to believe is Venus which is obviously very bright. I guessed it could be Jupiter but from my limited skills and some reading up this could well be wrong...

Did anyone else see it and can anyone tell me what it was?

Thanks,

Smokey

[Doc]

Hello and welcome to SGL.

From your description I would say you saw Jupiter.

[Ford Prefect]

This is a very helpfull FREE program for helping you identify objects in the night sky

www.stellarium.org/

Jon

[iamjulian]

Jupiter would have been reasonably high above the horizon in the south by 2.30am. Venus would have been just above the horizon at that time, in the north north east.

[ashenlight]

Sounds like a spot on description for Jupiter get Stellarium if you can, it's so helpful for finding your way around the night sky. Some people install it on their laptops and take them outside for stargazing - Stellarium has a 'night vision' mode (red light) so looking at the screen won't spoil your vision

[Trull]

Here's the skymap for what you were looking at, I'd heartily recommend Stellarium btw, its awesome, runs on Mac Linux and also Windows.

[Taz]

where abouts in the north west are you mate ? I live at Blackrod near bolton/wigan/chorley

it sounds like Jupiter , I saw it last night but every time i got the telescope out it dissapeared behind a cloud, it was quite bright though

[mike.brightmore]

Jupiter was the brightest object in the sky at that time and was just south of east. It isn't usually orange but being fairly low down (22 degrees above the horizon) the atmosphere can cause an orange colouration (like with the setting Sun). Mars has a reddish tint and was about last night. This was lower in the sky at that time (14 degrees above horizon) and just north of east. It is quite faint at present though and doesn't stand out like Jupiter. Venus was only just rising at 2.30 a.m. so you would have to have been on high ground to see it very low on the horizon (again just north of east). It is brighter than Jupiter. I agree with all the comments about Stellarium.

[Smokey1875]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I will check out Stellarium as well, it sounds good!

Taz, I live in Blackburn, very high up and it was a very clear night from here so I had a great view.

Superb website everyone.

Paul

[Taz]

hehe i live in another Black but Blackrod not blackburn, still not far away from me and roughly the same altitude, yep there are some really helpfull people on here a great place for info i have found

keith

[Delphine]

Hi Smokey! i would think an orange not so flickery "star" would indicate the planet Mars.

Saturn is a pale yellow, wheras Jupiter is a clear white, and Venus is a BRIGHT white.

Although i just saw other posts & the maps they provided to you - so looks like the ruling is Jupiter - being so low I had not thought about that!

Stars flicker, Planets do not.

Stars seem to rotate around the North Star

Planets keep to the Ecliptic line (closer to the path of the Sun and Moon)

I have found skymaps.com to be a terrific resource in providing easy to read maps - be sure to download your one free copy in the Northern Hemisphere (I think England is Northern)

Well happy Star Gazing!