What Is The Bright Light In The Sky Tonight

If you ve looked up at the night sky recently you might have been surprised to see a train of bright lights moving.

What is the bright light in the sky tonight. It rises in the east about four hours before the sun at the start of september. This is the astronomer s scale for measuring the brightness of objects in the sky. Venus is still brilliant in the morning sky now shining at 4 2 magnitude as september opens. Venus is the third brightest object in the sky behind the moon and sun.

The planet is shrinking in diameter as it recedes from the earth towards the far side of the sun and its phase is becoming gibbous. Use it to locate a planet the moon or the sun and track their movements across the sky. Beta the interactive night sky map simulates the sky above new york on a date of your choice. September 18 mercury gets high with the moon mercury will reach a peak of eight degrees above the horizon tonight.

The satellites are launched in batches of 60 deploying into an orbit about 180 miles above our planet before thruster firings over the next one to four months move them to an operational altitude of around 340 miles. That bright evening star is actually a planet venus and from the northern hemisphere it will be visible in the evening sky all through the rest of april and into may. These next several nights september 28 29 and 30 2020 use the bright waxing gibbous moon to find the star fomalhaut it s one of our sky s 1st magnitude stars or brightest stars and. Jupiter and venus can both be strikingly bright.

Unlike stars they generally don t twinkle as they have an apparent diameter large enough that the effect of turbulence in the earth s atmosphere averages out. In fact it will reach its absolute brightest on 28 april yes it will get even brighter than it already is if only slightly. The dimmest object visible in the night sky under perfectly dark conditions is about magnitude. But dazzling venus will remain bright and.

If you have seen this series of bright objects in the night sky it is most likely that you have seen the spacex starlink satellites. Venus the brightest planet reached its greatest elongation from the sun in the morning sky on august 12 or 13 depending upon your time zone.