Earthed

What planet can currently be seen in the southern hemisphere?

We just spent some time in French Polynesia and saw this really bright object in the sky. It was so much brighter/larger than the other stars, and it shined instead of twinkled, which makes me think it was a planet. Was it a star or a planet? If planet, which one?

Public Comments

1. jupiter.
2. that is jupiter
3. You probably noticed its brightness because you were in really dark skies.
   
   
   
   The fact is that the planets, because they reasonably follow the ecliptic (the path of the sun across the sky), are generally visible from both hemispheres. Jupiter was certainly visible from the Northern hemisphere during this time, and still is. It is that most people have to contend with city lights.
4. The only difference in the view of the planets from the two hemispheres is that they travel across different parts of the sky. The ecliptic (the plane where the planets are found) crosses the southern sky in the northern hemisphere, and it crosses the northern sky from the southern hemisphere.
   
   
   
   If you looked through a telescope at them, they would appear upside-down from the way they would look in your telescope from the northern hemisphere as well.
   
   
   
   This bright object was almost certainly Jupiter, since all the other naked-eye visible planets are bunched up in the sky next to the Sun right now.