Astronomy What was that in the night sky?
826755
If it was bright white or yellow and was fast moving, then it was a meteorite.
430419
Have you ever looked at the sky and seen a shooting star?\n\nThese are meteors burning up as the enter the atmosphere.  Is this what you are talking about?
166889
I live in a small town in the midwest and make it a point to go out and do some stargazing.  The street lights do wash out some of the dimmer stars, but there are still a lot of stars to see.  Going out into the countryside will reveal a lot more stars.  Not only the stars though, in the last week I have also seen Mars, Venus, Saturn, Jupiter and Mercury..and the most fantastic cresent moon in the early morning.  If a person can get up into the mountains at night (no mountains where I am at), the sky is very full of stars...way too cool.
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
231023
This is caused by thermic convection of the air. In the deserts you normally have high differences in temperature between day and night, so hot air is rising rapidly while cold air is moving downwards after sunset. This different densities in the air makes the light bend and the stars seems as if they are dancing, just as if you were looking through an irregular glass. \nIt's a bad night for astronomers.
694258
Distant galaxies....\nGlobular star clusters...\nOpen star clusters...\nNebulae...\nVariable stars...
238318
Up in the sky somewhere, at a guess.
405736
this is not a question about astronomy.\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy
206825
Depending on the speed of this 'objects' transition from Northern sky to southern....\n\nIf it was less than 2 hours after sunset, AND if it took 15 or more seconds to make the transition, it was probably a satellite in polar orbit.\n\nIf however the transition was RAPID ( 3 seconds or less ), it was probably a meteoroid.
1022582
Night Out With The Stars
77447
The brightest star in the sky is Sirius (aka the Dog Star) and it is sort of bluish, and iridescent.  It flashes so many colors that I have many times had people convinced it was a plane and bet me money it wasn't a star, only to see it sitting quite still among the stars for hours.  THis star would have probably been on the western horizon pretty late, like around 2 or 3 am (it's usually rather high in the south when I go to work at 10pm).\n\nMars, being rather red, is also quite visible recently, and would be hovering near the horizon also quite late.  Mercury is always near the sun, and is likely to be seen in the west just after sunset (but I can't say for sure, since I haven't seen it recently--it's usually already set by the time I wake up for work).  And it seems like I recently saw Venus being quite right, and it should be setting a few hours after sunset.\n\nIf you give the color and the time, I could give you a better answer.
924882
There are thousands of large objects up there.  Any evening within a few hours after sunset, and it's pretty common to see quite a number of them with the naked eye.  They catch the sun's light and you can see the dots moving across the sky.
854909
If you mean the Leonids, you've missed the peak which was at the weekend.\n\nFor more info, try any one of the thousands of astronomy websites, eg Jodrell Bank Observatory, etc\n\nSkymaps.com is a good one - they'll send you a monthly email with a link to the night sky for that month (north & south hemispheres), with a list of events to look out for.
629153
The sky is what people back in the day called what they saw above them because they didnt know what it was..\n\nnow that we know, we know that what we see as blue sky is just refraction of light, and when there is no light ( night ) we just see things out in the universe that reflect light(moon) or emit light ( stars ) \n\nso the sky doesnt really exist, what it is is gases that refract sunlight during the day, and let you see through at night
354428
Read;\n\nhttp://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/faq/part4/section-14.html
1181721
What does this have to do with astronomy?
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.