Quote:
Originally Posted by Dart77
Hi There All, my first post and I just joined to see if anyone here could identify an interesting star I often see - from a description. Please excuse my layman's terminology! I'm in Perth and I am not an astronomer and I don't even have any binoculars or a telescope. But I am always out at night and more often than not I have my eyes angled up towards the heavens in wonderment.
I often see this star, I don't think it's a planet as it always seems to follow a similar path. I have looked at Stellarium and tried to see if that would identify it using the approximate time within minutes, the day, setting my location etc. But I can't see anything that resembles this beauty in that position.
I live near Perth Airport and so am used to seeing lots of aircraft in various far positions approaching and leaving. Anyone used to seeing large airliners at night would look at this star for a few seconds and more than likely say it's a distant jet. Because that's how it appears.
Anyway, here is the description:
Last few months, around 8.15 to 8.30pm it is seen low in the SSW sky, quite bright, and by around 1am it has arced up higher to be in the West, right over where the sun sets and more noticeable than earlier. It has a strange squashed shape, longish, which led me to think it might be Sirius, as I read that Sirius is a double star? It gives off a bright white but sometimes slightly bluish light with occasional bright red and other colours such as green seen as well. It is quite mesmerising to watch. And the squashed shape is unusual to my eyes.
Has anyone got an idea of which distant Sun this is? On Stellarium, Sirius was not near the position I see this.
Thanks.
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Dart77,
You aren't going to find it in any planetarium program as anything outside the Earth locale is going to set when it is in the West not rise higher as the night progresses, unless it is far south.
Are you sure of your Cardinal directions, as Jupiter is bright in the East and rises? It may be the moons, atmospheric distortion or your eyes that make it appear slightly elongated.
Paul