Brightest Star in the night Sky?
139701
Sirius A,  the dog star, in the constellation Canis Major.
953702
Sounds like you may be looking at Sirius, the brightest star in the  sky. It is a blue star but because of the refraction of the Earth's atmosphere appears to flash red every few seconds. It doesn't matter where you  are. It's visible this time of year anywhere in the northern hemisphere. BTW Sirius is called the dog star because it is part of the constellation Canis Major, the big dog. Canis Major looks just like a stick drawing of a dog and Sirius is its eye.
996835
Venus. This time of year though Venus is visible in the early morning so if you see this "star" at night rising from the east it may be Jupiter. It's quite bright as well.
1088976
here you go:\n\nhttp://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/stars/startypes.shtml\n\nFrom your list it would be nova, but that is for a (relatively) short period of time.
484123
At the half way point Alpha Centauri would be a little brighter, but not much brighter, and the Sun would look like a bright star, but not the brightest one in the sky. In other words, it would look just like night time on Earth when the sky is very clear and very dark, for example from a remote mountain top.
735570
sounds like it could have been sirius, in the constellation canis major. this is the brightest star in the northern hemisphere.
425588
There are only 2 that are bright enough to see with the naked eye, that is, they have a magnitude less than 3. Alphard is the brightest star of the constellation, with an apparent magnitude of 1.98. R Hydrae is intermittently visible because it has a varying magnitude between 3.5 and 10.9.
892778
I think maybe the separation is smaller than the resolving power of my eyes rather than the angular separation of my eyes. So I can't resolve the two sources and just see one bright star. \n\nBest of luck - Mike
742206
The Geminids ramp up over a few days, and should be visible most of the night, from around 10PM to dawn. Basically you need a location where you can see as many stars as possible.
75380
There is a surprisingly simple answer to your great question: Each month we see different stars, so to answer for a specific night of the year at your specific location on Earth depending on your eyesight and how bright the city lights around you are might be hard to pin down. \n However there is a magnitude scale that astronomers use to describe how bright objects in the sky are. Without getting into details on how that works, the average human being can see down to about magnitude 6 ( brighter objects have lower magnitude until you reach zero. Then even brighter objects use negative numbers for their magnitudes which is a bit weird, isn't it?) Therefore, all you have to do is get a map of the whole sky showing anything brighter than magnitude 6 and count the stars. If you are fortunate to be away from bright city lights and you can see the Milky Way, you would be really surprised to know that you can only see about 6,000 stars. That's the number of stars above magnitude 6 in the entire sky.
458153
It is an approximate way of measuring how big or bright or heavy something is.\n\nThe term comes from the brightness of stars. The brightest star in the sky is Sirius and there are about another dozen almost as bright (Vega, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse etc) that are collectively known as first magnitude stars. Not quite so bright are the second magnitude stars (eg a coupl of stars in The Plough are 2nd Magnitude, and so on down to the 5th and 6th magnitude stars, such as members of The Pleiades, which are only visible to the naked eye on bright, clear nights. And then even fainter stars that can only be seen with binoculars or a small telescope or a huge radio telescope.\n\nThe point is that star brightness is described in categories, in bands, which share similar properties eg "only able to be seen when there is a full moon out" or "supernovae". And it doesn't need to be more precise than that.\n\nThe phrase "to the nearest order of magnitude" is used widely outside of astronomy to indicate an approximate idea of what to expect, eg "How big a fine will I get for a parking offence? £100?"\n\nThe questioner is wanting to be reassured it is not £1,000 but more like £50 - £150.
658414
The brighter it is, the cooler the star is.\nThe darker it is, the hotter the star is
346966
Greetings,\n\nIt was probably Sirius the Dog Star.  One of the closer stars to us and when it twinkles it appears red, blue, green, and is really big for a star.\n\nIt was NOT a planet, as planets don't twinkle.  Jupiter is bright, but it's not very high up in the sky at 8:00 pm.  Venus is currently only up in the morning.  Saturn is a dim yellowish star in Gemini.  Mars is a dim orange star between Taurus and the Pleides.\n\nSo to sum up, it was most likely Sirius.\n\nYou can use the link provided for a interactive star chart that is easy to read and use.  Simply plug in your city and state and the time of day/night you want to see and most of the visible stars will show up along with the planets, comets, and a few other deep space objects.\n\n-matt
931600
Watch the stars outside if it's a clear night
1136943
M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is the most distant object easily seen with the naked eye. In a very dark sky, you may be able to see M33, which may be 3 million light years distant.\n\nIt's a little more difficult to determine what is the  most distant individual star that can be seen with the naked eye, as it is apt to be some faint, nondescript star. Also, it is difficult to accurately determine the distance to a single star at distances over 1500 light years. P Cygni, a fifth magnitude star in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan or Northern Cross) is a very luminous star possibly 6000 light years away. This is probably a reasonable approximation of how far away a star can be seen. Note that this is still in our Milky Way Galaxy, which is around 100,000 light years in diameter. However, you might be able to see a supernova in a nearby galaxy.  SN1987A in the large Magellanic Cloud reached third magnitude, and it was fairly dim for a supernova.  (About magnitudes: six is about the dimmest visible, smaller numbers are brighter. The brightest star, Sirius is -1.)
1179118
I googled "biggest star" and the first hit was the one below. The answer is the Pistol Star, which I never heard of before. Wikipedia also mentions Eta Carinae, which I have heard of before.
3571
Due North.  There are a couple of ways to find it.  One is to face due north and look up a bit.  If you know your latitude, you can find the North Star by looking up that many degrees from the horizon.  Hence, if you're in SF like me, the North Star will be ~38 degrees above the horizon.\n\nThe easier way is to find the Big Dipper\nhttp://www.wsanford.com/~wsanford/exo/constellations/bigdipper.gif\nWhich is a prominent and easy constellation to find in the northern sky.  Then, close one eye, stretch out your arm, and spread your fingers so that the front two stars (across from the "handle") are each covered by one of your fingers.  Those front two stars point right at the North Star.  Trac out in a straight line from those two stars, going "up" (if you imagine the dipper being oriented in a way that it would hold water) for a distance that is five times the distance between those two front stars.  So if you swing your arm along, placing the lower finger where the top finger just was, and keeping the spacing of your fingers steady, it will direct you to a bright star.  That star is the North Star.