A star like object that is very bright and distant. is what?
605884
A quasar? Quasars (QUASi-stellAR radio source) hava an energy output that is much greater than the brightest stars.
1140662
If you mean the bright object sometimes near the moon when it's low in the sky around sunset or sunrise, it's Venus, otherwise known as the morning star or evening star. Three ways to verify that it is Venus: \n1. After the Sun and moon, it's the next brightest natural object in the sky.\n2. It's never seen more than a couple of hours after sunset in the western sky or before sunrise in the eastern sky, though it's bright enough to sometimes be visible just before sunset or just after sunrise.\n3. With good binoculars resting on something solid (to prevent vibration) you can sometimes make out a disk (or some part of it, depending on phase). Venus is the only planet whose disk can be seen without a telescope.
1107060
You can tell whether a point of light in the dark sky is a satellite or star usually by whether it moves or not. Stars are very far away so they look stationary. Satellites usually moves across the sky. Whether or not the the satellites are Japanese, American, or Russian, you have to look up the satellite in astronomy programs that plot satellite trajectories. You can't tell just by looking.\n\nAlso, some bright lights can be just airplanes flying at high altitude.
626653
Proxima Centuri. About 4.2 light years away. Check the foll link for more info\n\nst
919794
Brightness as seen on earth is called Magnitude.\nBrightness as would be seen from orbit around star is called Luminosity.
735570
sounds like it could have been sirius, in the constellation canis major. this is the brightest star in the northern hemisphere.
115588
look at a really really bright light
39095
No. \n\nStar:\nA self-luminous celestial body consisting of a mass of gas held together by its own gravity in which the energy generated by nuclear reactions in the interior is balanced by the outflow of energy to the surface, and the inward-directed gravitational forces are balanced by the outward-directed gas and radiation pressures\n\nPlanet:\nA nonluminous celestial body larger than an asteroid or comet, illuminated by light from a star, such as the sun, around which it revolves.\n\nSo, stars are self-luminous (have their own light) and are stationary. Planets don't produce their own light and revolve around a star.
331809
science_FREAK, you think the furthest star is just 82 million km away????!!!  That wouldn't even take us out of our own solar system!  In fact, our star, the Sun, is 150 million km away!\n\nIf you mean why do some stars "appear" brighter than others, then that is because stars are at different distances from the Earth, and they are different sizes.  IF you had 2 identical stars, but one was twice the distance from the Earth that the other, then the further away one would appear much dimmer in the sky.\n\nBut all stars shine with a slightly different brightness, I doubt that any two are identical.  So the appearance of some stars being brighter than others is down to size of stars and how far away from us that they are.
356177
In lay man's terms:\n\nA star: a huge ball of fire, emitting heat and light, mostly composed of gasses and the source of the heat is the nuclear reactions happening isnide it due to the massive pressure in its core. An example is the sun, the temperture of its surface if more than 5000 degress centigrade, while the temperature of its core is several million degrees. A star is 'usualy' much larger than planets(thouthands to millions of times larger) . Some stars have planets orbiting around them (e,g, our sun)\n\nPlanets: Intert masses that do not emit light or radiate heat. Planets revolve around stars and are far much smaller than stars(e.g. earth, mars, saturn, jupiter,etc). Some planets have moons(much smaller planets) revolving around them.Mostly planets are solid masses, but sometimes they are made of gases. The temperature of planets is far cooler than stars.
907627
It could have been a variable star or you saw a nova. check the NASA site to see if they have any news about this. I didn't see anything there but in future here is the web page for NASA\nhttp://www.nasa.gov/news/highlights/index.html\nAlso could been the space station or a satellite
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
409741
If you are talking about the faster spinning star, then that would be a neutron star.  However there was recently some info on the fasting moving star across our sky, see this site ...\n\nhttp://www.jb.man.ac.uk/news/fastestpulsar.html\n\nThis star is moving so quickly, 1100 kilometers per second, that it could get from New York to London in 5 seconds
416509
You can see many of them with the naked eye, and some of the get pretty darn bright.  You can even see the inetrantional space station when it passes overhead.  Of course any of these objects will jusst look like a star moving across the sky at a decent rate.  But it is pretty cool.\n\nhttp://www.heavens-above.com will tell you exactly what is visible from your location on any night, as well as where to look.  You'll need a little bit of amature astronomy knowledge (magnitudes, reading a starchart) to get much out of it, but it is an awsome resource for this kind of thing.
671170
Are you including the stars that are being created, as well as those that do not actually exist anymore but have died out/ supernova'd/ etc. that we are just still seeing since the light has to travel so far?  \n\nI would be interested in how you determined this number ^_^
687802
The brightest stars, the ones you can see with the naked eye, are all B8 and B9.  Some of the dimmer ones are of other classes--B,A,F, and perhaps some cooler classes, too.
65484
To clarify more, cepheid stars are one the most common way to determine the distance to a distant galaxy. These stars are extremely uniform in their brightness, so by measuring their brightness as seen from the Earth, scientists can determing how far away that star would have to be to be that faint.