Extremely bright star visible from southern california (Inland Empire)

reply to post by Skada


Sorry Skada, but you won't be able to see any clouds on Venus through an earth-bound telescope, All you see is a bluish-green-whitish disc. Granted, that IS the cloud, but you won't be able to tell that it is actually cloud I mean.
BTW, I pointed my scope at Venus last week.


To the OP- was your sighting in the early evening or just prior to sunrise? I believe that is pretty much the only time Venus will be visible, as it never strays to far from the sun.

BTW-Jupiter isn't visible this time of year-not from the northern hemisphere anyways.

[edit on 6-5-2010 by JJRichey]

reply to post by JJRichey


it is still worth a mention. My rule of thumb: If it twinkles, most likely a star. If it is steady: Most likely a planet. Either way, a telescope would help.

very bright, seen tonight in Riverside, looks like something on fire in the sky, probably Venus...

Ok peeps, I am new here. Let me know if I am not posting correctly ect. Because Im not sure if I am or not. I found this website via Google, because I was searching to see if anyone out there had seen what I've seen. And low and behold...what you guys are talking about, is exactly what I've watched for sometime now. I think for a couple of months. Up here in the high desert, this thing is visible (excuse me, "was" visible around the time.the sun sets. And I got to say..I've spent some time watching this thing. The truth is. Their are 2 of them. The bright one and the little one that sometimes sets above it and to the right of it. And it's not always In that order. I've watch this thing move with my own eyes. Both of them. Sometimes one without the other. But they seem to be connected. The strangest part about this is whole thing has got to be the fact that it's gone now. Like poof! No more. That thing is not Venus. And it's in our atmosphere. Not a star at all. My husband works for NASA. And the most compiling thing of all is that I showed him this thing one night. He Claims that he doesn't know. As we stood on the porch talking about it. We both looked away for maybe a minute. When i looked back up however, this thing had started to go down. Both of them. And he saw it as well as I did. But denied it could be anything but a star. Listen, I don't have my head up in the air. And I haven't snapped as far as I know. But one thing I know for sure without a doubt.
Is that this thing has got to be some weird expirement from our government. If not the case, then I know our government would surely be blowing this thing out of the sky themselves. All I want to know is, why are so many people willin to deny or not question stuff like this. I have a picture of it. Although the picture sucks. When u zoom in on this thing, the picture becomes seemingly disterted. But I can see that it's no star. I Don't know how to post a picture if it's even aloud or not. Otherwise I would post it.

a reply to: Jewlery

That's been Venus & Jupiter doing a lovely dance all spring and the first part of summer. Here's a whole bunch of photos taken during that time: Link

The Earth was leaving Jupiter behind towards the far side of the Sun, but Venus caught-up to us on the inside track, getting brighter as it got closer. For a while they were in an approximate line with Earth:

a reply to: sremmos

I can see one that fits that description from tn, but I don't think it looks low to me. Very bright and a color tint. Don't know much about placement/stars/plants . But you got me to leave my my closed in deck to go look . Not even sure if I am seeing the same thing but stands out to me. Thanks

a reply to: Reallyfolks

Um, you're answering a post that's more than 5 years old. The star you're looking at is Arcturus, which is one of my favorites. It's an old star which has used-up all the hydrogen in its core and is now burning (nuclear fusion, actually) helium. This has caused it to swell up to ~25 times the radius of our sun (though its mass is about the same). As it swelled-up, the surface area increased and allowed it to radiate more heat. Thus its outer surface is much cooler than our sun. This gives it its nice, golden-orange color.

Arcturus a bit of an odd-ball for this neighborhood. Almost every star we can see with our naked eye is rotating around in the disk of our galaxy like horses on a merry-go-round. Arcturus is diving through the disk of the galaxy at right-angles to the rest of the traffic. This means it is moving across our sky very fast compared to other stars - which is especially notable because it is ~36 light-years away - not exactly close. Since Roman times, it has moved more than twice the width of our moon across the sky, which is a lot when compared to nearly every other bright star in our neighborhood.

In Hawai'ian, Arcturus is known as Hōkūle`a, which means "star of gladness". From the islands, it passes straight overhead in the summertime. The ancient Polynesian mariners would use it as a guide-star: They'd sail north from Tahiti until it was overhead and then look east-west for Hawai'i; if they could see the Trade Winds disrupted by the tall volcanoes, they knew they were west of the islands. If they didn't see this, they knew they were to the east.

For me, when I'm walking the dog late at night in the dead of winter, seeing Arcturus rising in the east tells me that spring is not far off. It also reminds me of a woman I met in the summer of '87...