Ancient stargazers had a pretty limited entertainment lineup, so they spent a lot of time staring up at the night sky and noticed that certain bright objects moved around while the stars stayed put. One celestial body caught their attention because it would show up blazing bright in the eastern sky just before dawn, earning it a nickname that stuck for thousands of years. Which planet is known as the morning star?
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Correct Answer: Venus
(Source)Venus gets called the morning star even though it's definitely not a star and only sometimes appears in the morning sky. It earned this star status by being the ultimate showoff of the solar system, and reflecting sunlight so well that it outshines everything else up there except the sun and moon. Ancient civilizations actually thought they were looking at two different objects because Venus also appears as the "evening star" on the opposite side of the sky after sunset, depending on where it is in its orbit around the sun. The Greeks called the morning version Phosphoros and the evening version Hesperos until they finally figured out they were getting worked up over the same planet.
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