WHat did I see?

[prso1982]

I live in the U.K. And around 5pm tonight I looked to the sky and saw a star like object in the sky to the west. Now I'm sure it wasn't a star because the sky wasn't fully dark and there were no other bright objects like stars in the sky. Can any one please tell me what it is? Cheers.

[doom_shepherd]

Probably Jupiter.

[MeteorWayne]

Well it surely was Jupiter, since less than half an hour after sunset (with the sun only about 6 degrees below the horizon) it is the brightest object in the sky by far. However, your direction is off, since it was in the SSE (azimuth 160 degrees). There are three 0 magnitude stars in the sky that you just might be able to see; Arcturus in the west, Vega overhead, and Capella in the east, but Jupiter is about 10 times brighter at mag -2.4 and much easier to notice.

At that hour Arcturus would have been nearly directly above where th sun was below the horizon, (due west) so the sky would probably have been too bright for you to see it.

MW