What planet is that?

Venus is blazing right now in the West at Sunset, but if you're just a casual kinda observer like me, then you might likely not know it's Venus, or have forgotten the rules of when Venus appears, like me.

Here is a great site that I've found that has a pretty cool and intuitive interface to let you checkout which planet that extra bright light in the sky is last-night, tonight, or tomorrow-night.

https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/night/

 

There are cellphone/tablet apps that allow you to hold them toward the sky and see a graphic showing names, trajectories, etc. of what you can see in that direction. They correct for lat/long, time, and positioning of your device.

They usually work indoors, too. So, you can see if the object you're interested in is in view (ignoring clouds, buildings, light sources, and other crap).

 

Which one do you use?

 

I've switched around between the free ones that have good ratings as they have different strengths.

There is one called "ISS Live Now" that I recently loaded. It's specific to ISS. It tracks the ISS in real time around the globe. I want to show someone the ISS and it moves pretty fast along paths that vary (from our perspective) - making some help important.

 

I figured it was either Venus or an alien mother ship. Tough call.