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This object is one of the brightest things I have seen in the Hawaiian sky. I'm in HPP and the direction is roughly SW. At first I thought it was a satellite because it is so bright and, to my aging eyes, it did not look perfectly round. But it didn't move and appears in the night sky every night. It won't go away.
What is that? Venus? Mars? Venus and Mars in a rare conjunction? Are Venus and Mars alright tonight? What is that?
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Venus! The brightest object in the night sky, apart from the Moon. It's been exceptionally clear lately.
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Yeah, I think you could read by its light lately!
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Kelena,
Yes, it's Venus. It's visible in the evening until it sets. In a few months, it will appear in the early morning sky in the northeast. It's close to its brightest right now due to a combination of both it and the Earth's orbit and their positions relative to the sun.
And yes, it doesn't appear perfectly round, something you can tell with the naked eye but is more obvious if you look through binoculars at twilight (any later, when the sky is darker the glare makes it difficult to make out its shape). It orbits closer to the sun than Earth, the consequence is we see the planet having phases, a little bit like the moon. Right now we see a crescent-shaped Venus as sunlight is only being reflected from its upper-atmospheric clouds from one side of the planet. (Edited to fix grammar).
This might help -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_Venus
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PS. Kelena - this is a rapid-fire 101 course on Venus if you are interested:
https://youtu.be/ZFUgy3crCYY
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It snows metal and it takes over 234 days to complete a rotation...which is backwards! And the entire planet may be one giant super-volcano! I guess we will have to admire it from afar for awhile.
That guy in the video is awesome, TomK. Definitely worth the time. He makes Carl Sagan --may he rest in peace in a different and desirable form of matter because matter is never destroyed-- look a little lugubrious.
Okay, thank you everyone. I am no longer concerned that visitors from another planet are hovering over our Puna spaceport, in a landing pattern. Although, if they are from Venus, I can certainly understand why they would want to leave. Greenhouse gases gone wild.
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Kelena,
He's Phil Plait aka "The Bad Astronomer". He's not actually a bad astronomer, but the name comes from his old website he set up in the 90s - badastronomy.com - where he discussed and corrected misconceptions about astronomy; he's an excellent astronomy educator. Although I have never met him personally, we used to communicate occasionally when I was more active in the skepticism community.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Plait
