Planet? I.d. Help

So I live in Colorado and as of late, perhaps last 6 weeks, there is a crazy bright "star" to the  southwest. I'll have to take a picture for comparison but, it is as bright as the decorative lights in my neighbor's yard. I'm rubbish as astronomy so I would live some help here. I used my iPad's star mapping app and it shows it as being Venus. Is this correct? If so, why is it so large and bright. I have always been a night sky gazer, but I have never noticed this before. 
Please don't think I'm fishing for Nibiru or doom thread, just would like to know why it's the brightest/largest thing I'm seeing for the last couple months. No doubt anyone in north America can look up and see it. It moves fairly quickly, I watched for about 10 minutes and it moved the distance of the length of my neighbors roof. That equates to about and inch and a half from my perspective. 
I did use high powered 10x50 binoculars and it's just extremely bright with nothing else really to make out. I have got to purchase a decent telescope. Thanks for any insight/info on the planet in question (again, SHOULD be Venus?)

It's Venus, and the star Antares, which flashes colors blue, red right beyond it.

Venus is reacting to the increased amount of energy the sun is giving off (lots of solar flares lately) but also just to the apparently increased 'energy' of the section of space we're passing through. Antares is famous for that dancing red/blue effect. It's a red giant and massive compared to our sun.

reply to post by Hr2burn

This should answer a lot of your questions:

Apparent Magnitude

The actual magnitude depends on things like how far the planet is from the sun, how big the planet is, how reflective it is, and the angle of illumination (is it crescent shaped reflection of sunlight, or a full circle?). Then the apparent magnitude depends on the distance from Earth.

The apparent brightness of Venus varies depending on all these factors. It can actually appear brighter as a crescent, than when it's full near the opposite side of the sun, if it's closer to Earth as a crescent. Here are apparent magnitude numbers, and there are a couple of things you should be able to see brighter than Venus like the ISS in some cases (brightest at top):

App. Mag. Celestial object
–9.50 Maximum brightness of an Iridium (satellite) flare
–5.9 International Space Station (when the ISS is at its perigee and fully lit by the Sun)
–4.89 Maximum brightness of Venus when illuminated as a crescent
–3.82 Minimum brightness of Venus when it is on the far side of the Sun
–2.94 Maximum brightness of Jupiter
–2.91 Maximum brightness of Mars
–2.50 Faintest objects visible during the day with naked eye when Sun is less than 10° above the horizon
–2.50 Minimum brightness of new Moon
–2.45 Maximum brightness of Mercury at superior conjunction (unlike Venus, Mercury is at its brightest when on the far side of the Sun, the reason being their different phase curves)
–1.61 Minimum brightness of Jupiter
–1.47 Brightest star (except for the Sun) at visible wavelengths: Sirius

It's interesting to note that even at its dimmest point, Venus is still far brighter than the brightest star at the bottom of the list above.

reply to post by Hr2burn

Venus "overtakes" the Earth every 584 days as it orbits the Sun.[2] As it does so, it changes from the "Evening Star", visible after sunset, to the "Morning Star", visible before sunrise.

Venus

signalfire
Venus is reacting to the increased amount of energy the sun is giving off (lots of solar flares lately) but also just to the apparently increased 'energy' of the section of space we're passing through. Antares is famous for that dancing red/blue effect. It's a red giant and massive compared to our sun.

Venus appears bright as seen from earth simply because it is relatively close to the Earth right now. It always gets this bright when it is this close to Earth.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


if that is the same bright light i am seeing in pa i cant even put my head around the fact it may be venus. This "star" is bright and humongus here anyway. It's scary really!

misse2miss
reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

 

if that is the same bright light i am seeing in pa i cant even put my head around the fact it may be venus. This "star" is bright and humongus here anyway. It's scary really!

I live in PA also. What direction were you looking and at what time? If you were looking in the general vicinity of Venus then I think it must be Venus you are seeing -- unless you are seeing TWO really bright objects.

Venus is so bright at the moment, there is no way you would NOT see Venus (and another bright object, if what you are seeing isn't Venus), even if you were just looking in that general direction. Venus is that prominent right now.

Venus is as bright as it's been for several months right now, being the brightest object in the night sky, other than the moon. In fact, if you knew exactly where to look, it is sometimes possible to see Venus in broad daylight. That's how bright it is right now. It will continue to brighten up for the next month or so. It has also been getting higher in the sky lately, and getting farther from the Sun (from our point of view), so it is much more prominent in the night sky than it has been for a while.

Maybe you could try one of those planetarium programs or smartphone apps. if you use one of those smartphone sky-chart apps where you point your phone in the sky, be careful about its accuracy. I had one that didn't seem to know my exact location well enough, and the sky it showed me was shifted away from the actual direction it was pointing.

Wow! Thank for all the answers! I can't pick up on the red/blue of Antares, but like someone else said, it's hard to wrap my head around this being a planet.

reply to post by misse2miss

It's scary really!

wait till you see the moon,

Hr2burn
Wow! Thank for all the answers! I can't pick up on the red/blue of Antares, but like someone else said, it's hard to wrap my head around this being a planet.

Just with a cheap telescope you can get a good view, especially now with Venus being so close.

Actually mesmerizing when you see it through telescope, spend $50 on a cheap scope and you can get decent views of our near by neighbors

reply to post by Hr2burn


Congratulations, you have discovered Venus, the planet that has been known since antiquity as the "morning star" or the "evening star". Later into the night, you can see Jupiter fairly high in the sky, an that is also very bright. I have seen Venus since I was a kid, but remember discovering Jupiter only about 7 or 8 years ago, and how impressed I was. I was looking at the largest planet in the Solar System!

So yeah, enjoy looking at Venus whenever it's up. It's beautiful, and no wonder the Greeks and Romans named their goddess of love after it. If you're into Tolkien, he based Earendil on Venus, as the mariner who sails the skies.

reply to post by wildespace


Speaking of Jupiter, it too is extremely bright at the moment -- although not as bright as Venus.

Jupiter is a magnitude of about -2.3 right now, and it has been rising in the eastern sky, located to the north of Orion, right around midnight (at least from from location in the Northeastern United States). The brightness of Jupiter is quite noticeable in the late night/early morning sky at the moment.