Bright star to the southwest?

Anyone else seeing this? It's REALLY bright, whatever it is. Been seeing it for a while now (like a couple of weeks) whenever I am out after dark, and tonight coming back to the house from the other building, I could see this thing shining through the trees very noticeably.

Venus?

Yep! Been watching it myself when ever Northeast Ohio has a clear night. Every blue moon

http://www.space.com/23495-venus-pla...explained.html

Probably Venus, which can be amazing at certain times:
http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essent...saturn-mercury

When you see it in the evenings, it's heading toward us. Morning visibility means it's heading away.

Yep, it's Venus. If you look at it through binoculars you can see it's crescent shaped (Venus is dimmest on Earth when it is full, because it has to be on the opposite side of the side for it to be full from our perspective).

Mercury is also putting on a good show in pre-dawn hours. Unfortunately, sun diver Comet ISON has appeared to have disintegrated as it passed the sun and isn't giving us a good show anymore. Poopie. Was really hoping to have a naked-eye visible comet this year.

http://www.griffithobs.org/skyreport.html

Yeah, was a lot of hype about Ison floating around. I find the "doom and gloom" scenarios fascinating, but after a while it gets old from reading about nearly everything causing a catastrophe of one sort or another.

Anyway, I have toyed with the idea of getting a decent telescope, but I keep getting stymied by the simple fact that it would be a waste where I live. I'm right in the middle of the woods, so unless what I was interested in looking at is directly overhead, then it probably wouldn't be visible anyway. Trees would be in the way. So I always scrap the idea as just being silly for my situation.

Probably just as well, as I'm sure I would want to photograph stuff, and that would likely run into even more expense for something I'll shove in a closet after playing with it for a month.

Besides, there are bears running around here at night....

Rich,

I'll trade ya a week of life here on a western ranch for a week in Florida! I wanna see some alligators! We have no real light pollution here, and you can see for miles. Plenty of fun stuff to do here! Leave the cows in the pasture alone, though. They ain't the kind you wanna tip.

Off thread kinda.I've seen it too! See a lot of other crazy things,as Luke's Air Force Base isn't too far.I must admit,I have real clear skies and like living out of the city,but Florida is great and green.Loved it! Believe me,122+degrees and it really doesn't matter if it is a 'DRY'heat!