What are the stars in sky we see at night with our naked eyes?

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I’ve always thought that stars in the sky are well, stars. But I just started to wonder, that are they just other stars or can we also see planets and such with our naked eyes? Like can the star be so bright that it could reflect the light from the planet so we can see it with just our eyes? Or are they all just other stars like our sun?

In: Physics

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’ll put things you see into 2 groups: inside and outside our solar system.

####Inside the Solar System
You can obviously see the sun and moon. Some times you can see other planets, but they have to be positioned just right.

‘Shooting stars’ are actually comets, asteroids, and artificial satellites, not stars.

####Outside the Solar System
These would be known as celestial objects

The vast majority of the ‘stars’ you see are really stars. The light originates from a star. But light is effected by gravity, so it is not necessarily a straight line from you to the star.

A few ‘stars’ you see might actually be entire galaxies! I think as many as 9 are visible with the human eye depending on your location and time of year.

AFAIK we cannot see any other celestial objects like black holes (via accretion disk), nebulea, exoplanets, etc.

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