I received an urgent email last night from a student who, while in the car last night, noticed a bright object above the moon. Was it a planet as her mom suggested? And if so which one? And do planets generate their own light or are we just seeing reflected light?
The last question was the easiest. The planets don’t generate light. You need something big and hot and fusiony, like a star, to generate light.
To figure out what the bright object was I did an internet search for star charts, and came across the Texas Astronomical Society’s webpage “Star Charts for Beginners“, which pointed me to the excellent, free program Stellarium.
You can use Stellarium to generate labeled images of the sky for almost any time, date, and place.
It looks like Jupiter could be seen above the Moon last night.