Most beloved 🌟star (Eärendil), which is it?

[Turgon]

Sure can our kid
I was out in my garden earlier, taking the air - the moon looks really cool... What would be even more cool would be to have a ME star map, with Wilwarin, Menelvagor, Helluin and the like. Wonder if anybody knows of one.

 

[Sarasota Joe]

The consensus seems to be that Eärendil is Venus, but Frodo and Sam see it shining in the east at Caras Galadhon in the evening. Venus as an evening star only appears in the west; it appears in the east only in the morning. As it revolves around the sun at a faster clip than the earth it spends about nine months as an evening star in the west and then nine as a morning star in the east.

But there is not much else it could be. The only celestial object besides the sun and moon bright enough to cast a shadow (as Eärendil does with Galadriel) is Venus. Unless of course there was another object at that time that is no longer visible or no longer as bright. Perhaps Eärendil is no longer in the sky - or has dimmed.

Another possibility is that his course was different then, and he had not yet settled into the regular pattern that we know.

Does anyone have an actual reference for Eärendil being identified as Venus by Tolkien? Not the evening star, but Venus?

 

[Poplartree]

Well, Jupiter was unusually bright during the spring and summer of 2009 — the brightest object in the sky for many weeks. Though I usually think that the star of Eärendil is Venus, I remember thinking on a warm August night that Jupiter looked more like a Silmarillion seen from afar...
Saturn is also often very bright.

Helluin would be Sirius, I think, brightest of the stars, with a twinkling blue shine you can see even in a brightly-lit city.
According to the Silmarillion, the Menelmacar is Orion, the Hunter with his bright belt. Wilwarin, the Butterfly, is Cassiopeia, the only constellation to have this distinctive pattern.

 

[Aernil]

Now fair and marvellous was that vessel made, and it was filled with a wavering flame, pure and bright; and Eärendil the Mariner sat at the helm, glistening with dust of elven-gems, and the Silmaril was bound upon his brow. Far he journeyed in that ship, even into the starless voids; but most often was he seen at morning or at evening, glimmering in sunrise or sunset, as he came back to Valinor from voyages beyond the confines of the world. (Silmarillion)

As for the rising of Venus in the opposite position of where it does now, don't forget that the rising of Sun and Moon were inverted in the Elder Days as well:

...as is said in the Narsilion, the Song of the Sun and Moon. These vessels the Valar gave to Varda, that they might become lamps of heaven, outshining the ancient stars, being nearer to Arda; and she gave them power to traverse the lower regions of Ilmen, and set them to voyage upon appointed courses above the girdle of the Earth from the West unto the East and to return. (Silmarillion)

 

[Alcuin]

From the Anglo-Saxon poem “Crist” (“Chirst”), lines 104-108,

Eala éarendel engla beorhtast / ofer middangeard monnum sended
ond soðfæsta / sunnan leoma,
torht ofer tunglas, / þu tida gehwane
of sylfum þe / symle inlihtes!​

which might be translated,

Hail Earendel, brightest of angels, over Middle-earth to men sent,
and true radiance of the Sun
bright above the stars, every season
thou of thyself ever illuminest. ​

Some folks want to assign this name Éarendel to John the Baptist, others to Christ, and still others (peevishly and perversely) to Teutonic myth. The poetry and the name struck Tolkien at an early age, and stayed with him afterwards: it was, in fact, the germ around which the whole legendarium was constructed: The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings.