Why do people call planets stars?

Question

I am trying to figure out why people refer to planets and stars as if they were the same thing? Am I missing something?

Answer 1

People call planets stars because they look like stars. You look up in the night sky and it's all just little points of light. To the ancients, planets were "wandering stars", but other than that they had no clue as to the differences.

Answer 2

People who do this are ignorant. Our planets are quite close and orbit the sun, which gives them their light. Stars are very far away and generate their own light. If you just look up into the sky it is difficult to tell the difference unless you watch for a while and you see the planets moving against the "stationary" background of stars. This may account for the confusion.

Answer 3

Only un-educated people would call planets and stars “stars”. They are two different things by definition.

But, in our sky in the night time, any planet will look (naked eye) like a “star” except for the moon which is too close to us so we can actually detail it.

So maybe you have heard people saying “stars” but is because they refer to stars in general in the sky.

Answer 4

Go outside on a clear night and look up. See all those little lights in the sky? To most people, they all look the same. So they call them all stars.

Answer 5

Because if you don't know much about astronomy, planets and stars look more or less the same from earth when seen by the naked eye.

FYI, people will think you're pretentious if you're always correcting them about that.

Answer 6

Stars are suns. However, Venus is a brightly shining planet and is referred to as the "Morning' or 'Evening' star.

Answer 7

it's called planet shine when light from earth reaches a ditstant planet and produes a twinkling effect just like stars and sine planets are small to our sightr people think they are stars.

Answer 8

I have never heard that one. Planets are planets and stars are stars.

Answer 9

It's astronomy. Astronomy is the scientific study of the universe, more specifically, the celestial objects' sizes, positions, motions and so on and so forth. *Planetology - a branch of astronomy that studies the origin and composition of the planets and other solid bodies in the solar system.

Answer 10

to miss something is good, but to appear that you are missing something is terrible!
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