whats the bright red star?

reply to post by NoNameBrand


Do you know of any similar apps that would work on BlackBerry?

Being an astronomy buff who has spent hours outside with my telescope and camera to take astropics, I'm quite friendly with the sky in the northern hemisphere.

As of this morning at about 6:15 AM, looking towards the east, you would see Mars, looking very bright and orange in color, but not "twinkling" (if the light is twinkling, it's star, if it's not, and appears stationary, it's a planet).
Looking towards the SE, is the constellation Bootes, and in it is a bright, yellowish/orange star called Acturus, but it would be twinkling a lot.

Last night at about 9:30 PM, you would have seen a very bright orange looking star, in the constellation Orion, as mentioned by others in this thread, that is Betelgeuse. Interesting trivia: The star Rigel is also in that constellation and appears as a bright blue/white star. Both of these stars have the same apparent magnitude of brightness, but Rigel is further away than Betelgeuse, at 1,500 ly away, where as Betelgeuse is only about 600 ly away. Betelgeuse is a red giant, about 300 times bigger than our sun.

The planets in our sky such as Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are very easy to see with the naked eye. Jupiter will appear as a very bright star that doesn't twinkle. Look at it with just binoculars and you'll actually see some of the banding barely, but you will see what looks like 4 faint stars near it, and those are actually it's 4 biggest moons.
Saturn will not be quite as bright as Jupiter, and will appear to have a slight yellowish tinge to it. Even a very small telescope pointed at it, and you'll see it's rings. Awesome looking!
Venus, appears always close to the horizon early in the morning or first thing in the evening. Binoculars will let you see it's phases just like the moon.
Mars is the tricky one, because it's quite small. However, I've actually seen it's white polar caps with a small 4 inch reflector telescope.

The iPhone app that was mentioned, is pretty cool. I was with a friend, and his son was looking up at the night sky, and asked what that bright star was. I told him it was Jupiter, because I know the sky so well. His father held up his iPhone at it, and said "Yep. That's what it is.", I looked over and saw the app was was like, oh wow, how cool!

Originally posted by qonone
reply to post by NoNameBrand

 

Do you know of any similar apps that would work on BlackBerry?

I've heard of the android and iphone apps, but I never heard of one for blackberry. Did you try searching for it or is this your Google substitute?

Personally I use stellarium, it's a great program. I'd even pay for it, it's that good, so the fact it's free is a real bonus.

reply to post by saroncan
That little black dot is called Venus. It will transit between the earth and the sun on June 5th 2012.

As for your blue kachina and red kachina. I personally have seen no evidence that supports either of those (with exception to the claims that they are linked to a Hopi Legend, the problem is that the Hopi do not have such a legend).

Blue Star Kachina Hoax

-saige-

reply to post by qonone


There was an app called Starry Night for the blackberry. It wasn't as user friendly as the android or iphone apps because of the type of hardware that is in a blackberry.

Here is their website. www.starrynighteducation.com... It seems that they are redeveloping the app.

Originally posted by NoNameBrand
reply to post by qonone

 

There was an app called Starry Night for the blackberry. It wasn't as user friendly as the android or iphone apps because of the type of hardware that is in a blackberry.

Here is their website. www.starrynighteducation.com... It seems that they are redeveloping the app.

I still use starry night on my PC (amongst some others).... the onliest reason why I use some others too, is that they can control my telescope, and starry night not..... Was one of the first decent astronomical software available, I think I had my first taste of it in the 80's somewhere.

Originally posted by nineix
Roughly 95% of UFO cases reported are total misidentification because people don't know what they are looking at.
It sounds ridiculous, but you'd be amazed at the number of people that freak out over Jupiter, or Venus.

I would argue that it's closer to 100% than 95% - granted that there might be a tiny percentage that no one can identify. Good post though