Once in 03 or 4 maybe 5, i was a college kid home for the summer, August, i had work so early, and i opened the front door into the predawn clear dark sky and i fucking gasped. The sight of it arrested my steps and i was in disbelief and awe. It was a fully bright white blue Christmas star shaped body in space as big as a dime in my field of vision, like the moon in size.

I read some days later, maybe that night, it was just Sirius

• Jupiter is a gas giant allowing it to be illuminated more than a solid moon.
• Jupiter is always fully illuminated from our viewpoint, whereas Venus is often in shadow, with its dark side toward us.
• Jupiter has a high albedo (reflectivity), as compared to Mars.
• Jupiter is a bit over three times the distance from the sun as Mars; the closest distance of Mars is 0.52 AU from the earth, .
• V]enus, while bright, is inside the Earth’s orbitp, and is often obscured by the sun, or has its dark side toward us so that, on average, Venus is even further away from Earth than Mercury.
• Jupiter’s diameter is 21 times that of Mars, which means its reflective surface area is 444 times as large as that of Mars. This is without doubt the main reason why Jupiter is the brightest planet, with the exception of certain times when Venus is in the right position and visible just after sunset or just before sunrise.