What is that bright star?
Thanks for all your interesting celestial tidbits, which my hubby and I enjoy very much. We are just viewers and treasurers of the skies we love so much, not a professional like you!
Could you perhaps enlighten us about a very bright star which is currently to be seen approx 30% up from the horizon to the east. When we say to the east, it is where our sun sets during the winter season. The star is at its brightest about an hour or so after sunset and seems to be setting, as around 7.15pm it is on the wane.
We were told it is Centaur, is this correct? We’re just puzzled that it is only during the last 6-8 weeks that we’ve spotted it. Why not before? It is so bright we would definitely not have missed it. Unfortunately our binocs are for game viewing so we cannot enjoy it as we’d love to.
If you could enlighten us we’d be delighted. We live west of Durban in a little settlement called Monteseel, 14km from Hillcrest. This info, so its quick for you to track our exact little slice of the magnificent Southern Skies.
Hope you have time to reply and we thank you very much!
Best Regards,
Marlene & Bob
Could you perhaps enlighten us about a very bright star which is currently to be seen approx 30% up from the horizon to the east. When we say to the east, it is where our sun sets during the winter season. The star is at its brightest about an hour or so after sunset and seems to be setting, as around 7.15pm it is on the wane.
We were told it is Centaur, is this correct? We’re just puzzled that it is only during the last 6-8 weeks that we’ve spotted it. Why not before? It is so bright we would definitely not have missed it. Unfortunately our binocs are for game viewing so we cannot enjoy it as we’d love to.
If you could enlighten us we’d be delighted. We live west of Durban in a little settlement called Monteseel, 14km from Hillcrest. This info, so its quick for you to track our exact little slice of the magnificent Southern Skies.
Hope you have time to reply and we thank you very much!
Best Regards,
Marlene & Bob
Dear Marlene and Bob
The star you see is in fact the planet Venus (note: The question was received in August 2013, when Venus was putting on a quite spectacular evening show). It is so bright because it’s quite large (almost the same size as Earth), is closer to Earth than any other planet, and has permanent 100% cloud cover so is a gleaming bright white in colour. In fact it’s the brightest thing in the sky, after the Sun and the Moon. Your binoculars should just be able to show it as a tiny circle instead of a dot like actual stars, and a telescope can show that it has phases like the Moon, but all those clouds mean that there’s nothing else of interest to see – just a featureless white disk. It is closer to the Sun than us, so as it orbits, we see it move across the sky to one side of the Sun, then the other. When it’s to the East of the Sun, we see it in the evenings, and when it’s to the West of the Sun we see it in the morning. You’ve heard of the Evening and Morning stars? They are both Venus at different times! It takes about 9 months for Venus to move one full cycle from Morning to Evening and back again, and I get quite a bit of enjoyment from tracking it and the other planets in their motions across the sky.
There is no such star as Centaur, although there is a constellation called Centaurus (which means the same thing). There are two very bright stars in Centaurus (alpha Centauri and beta Centauri) which are collectively known as The Pointers, because they form a line which points towards the Southern Cross. The brighter of the two, Alpha Centauri, is quite a bright star because it is the closest star to Earth (apart from the Sun, of course!).
I used to live in Pietermaritzburg, so I’m familiar with Hillcrest – lovely town. In this case, however, it doesn’t matter where you live: you get the same view of Venus wherever you are on Earth, unless you’re in the polar regions enjoying 24 hour sunshine!
Written by Allen Versfeld
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