What's that bright star?

Three clues

Twinkling. Stars are so far away that they are single points of light, and moving air bends that point about, so they twinkle. Planets are close enough to be tiny discs, and the wobbles average out. A bright point that shines steadily is very likely a planet.

Where it is. The planets, the Sun and the Moon all travel along roughly the same band across the sky. A bright point near where the Moon was last week, or where the Sun set, is in planet country.

How bright. Venus is brighter than anything but the Sun and Moon. Jupiter comes next. Mars changes a lot: some years it is a dull orange dot, some years it outshines everything but Venus and Jupiter. Saturn is bright but cream-coloured and calmer.

The bright stars that fool people

In winter, Sirius rises in the south-east in the late evening and is the brightest star of all. Low in the sky it twinkles in flashes of colour, red, blue and green, and people sometimes report it as something stranger. That flashing is the air, not the star.

Others: Vega high in summer, Capella in the north-east on autumn evenings, Arcturus in spring. They twinkle; the planets mostly don't.

Ask the card

Sky Tonight lists the planets that are 5° or more up at the time you would go out, brightest first, with the direction in compass words and the height in fists. If the bright thing you see is where the card says Jupiter is, it is Jupiter.

If the card lists nothing in that direction, it is a star, and that's a fine thing to have found too.

Why planets wander

The word planet comes from an old word for wanderer. Stars keep the same pattern night after night, year after year, but planets move slowly against them, because they are going around the Sun just as we are. Look at a bright planet next to a star this week and again next month, and the gap will have changed.

That is also why Sky Tonight's card changes through the year. In November and December 2026 the evening planet is Saturn; Venus, Mars and Jupiter are morning planets. By February 2027, Jupiter (opposite the Sun on 11 February) and Mars (on 19 February) are up all night, at their brightest of the year, and the card moves them into the evening.