Star, planet or satellite?

Is it a star, is it a planet or is it just a satellite. Yesterday, one of my friends asked me about what is the bright star in the night sky? Well, a lot of people tend to get the wrong impression when it comes to stars, planets or even satellites. So, whenever you see any bright and shining object in the sky, it must be either one of these objects.

First of all, it might be a star. How do you identify a star then? A star is an entity that emits lights. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. The reason why we can see the Sun with our naked eye is that it is quite near to Earth. It is approximately 149,600,000 km from the Earth. That is quite near in terms of light year. It takes at least 8 minutes for the sun light to reach Earth. Other stars however are further than that. The light that they emitted may take years to reach Earth. That's why you see stars blinking in the night sky.

Secondly, you can't really see a planet with the naked eye. You must at least use a telescope. The nearest planet that we can see as a dot in the night sky as I can recall is Mars. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Way back a few years ago, I joined a seminar regarding science and arts in Langkawi. A friend who is an astronomer showed me Mars with his telescope and I can see Mars as a white dot in the sky. You can't actually see any planet as a dot unless they are quite near to Earth. This phenomena is quite rare.

Last but not least, the satellite. It is rather easy to identify a satellite. If you see a white dot in the sky that is not blinking but rather bright, that is a satellite. This is because satellites are placed in orbits quite near to Earth. It is the brightest that you can see compared to stars and other entities.

I hope you guys will understand more of what we can really see in our sky. And I also hope that you guys will be able to identify all these entities better the next time you see one. Do bear in mind that you can't always have a clear sky at night. This depends on whether there are any clouds and also on the amount of industry in that area.

Sources:
Wikipedia