Was it a star/ Planet ?

[Bazile]

Last night at about 2240hrs I was outside - looked up at the sky from east to west and north to south - all i could see was one solitary 'star'

If in fact it wasn't a star , but rather one of the planets - why then were there no stars visible ?

[gen2]

You don't say where you were observing from. Was it the North of Scotland or the South of France?

If you could only see one object in the sky, then that must have been the brightest object around at the time. You don't say in which direction you saw this solitary light, but if it was in the West, then it was almost certainly the planet Venus.

We are now left with the possible reasons why nothing else was visible at that time, and there are three possibilities:
1) You are in the North of Scotland (or similar) where the sun is still not far below the horizon and it is still twilight. The background light is brighter than any other star or planet in the sky at that time so they cannot be distinguished.
2) You are in a town or city that has a high level of light pollution that swamps any fainter object.
3) There was a thin layer of cloud at medium to high altitude (altostratus or cirrostratus) that had sufficient opacity to obscre everything except the brightest object in the sky at that time.

[styley]

It was probably Venus as that is pretty bright. Something which I find interesting about astronomy is like were you see Venus which is a singular planet and what we call a star but other stars that we see in the sky are not singular and are actually entire galaxies like the galaxy which we are part of, the Milky Bar(joking). So there's a good chance that billions and that miles away there's a crowd looking up at their sky and we're just a speck to them.

[gen2]

Styley,
Firstly, not all planets are singular objects, most in our solar system have orbiting moon(s).
Secondly, not all 'stars' are galaxies. Whether or not they are singular objects though remains to be seen as our ability is limited when trying to identify orbiting planets at that distance.

[Bazile]

Thanks for your replies
I'm in Birmingham

Not sure what direction ( memo to self - must get a compass :-) )