I doubt that many Babylonians or Greeks or any others who cared about such things ever thought Hesperus and Phosphorus were different objects any more than we think the Morning Star and Evening Star are different. Is there any evidence apart from the use of two names?

I think we today underrate what it meant to see the stars clear and bright almost every night and at any part of the night you were awake outdoors -- and with many herdsmen and sailors and revelers and soldiers awake outdoors much of the night, besides people deliberately studying the night sky.

Every slightly interested party knew the circumpolar stars are up all the time, and just get blotted out by sunlight during the day. They had every reason to believe the adjacent stars that rise and set in the North are travelling 'behind' the earth from the time they set until they rise again -- and indeed that the whole sphere of fixed stars exists all the time and moves around.

They knew that Hesperus, when it is seen, moves away from the sun and then back towards it. And they knew that shortly after Hesperus disappears towards the sun, Phosphorus appears on the other side of the sun. Of course stars on one side of the sun are seen just before dawn, moving towards the sun until they disappear and then reappear on the other side just after sunset.

All the major wandering planets obviously move past the sun sometimes, appearing just east of it just after sunset at times, with the sun approaching, disappearing as the sun passes it, and and then appearing just west shortly before sunrise. That is the moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

I doubt any great number of people who cared about the question ever thought Hesperus was an exception which ceased to exist each time it moved towards the sun and then Phosphorus appeared, or that Hesperus suddenly went "somewhere else" where we could not see it. These were two names for two roles for one star.

Kuhn's book Copernican Revolution makes these points about the plainly visible motions of the stars -- including the wandering stars. Well, that is plainly visible before artificial lighting, in parts of the world with generally clear skies. He has a nice diagram explaining how people could not possibly have missed the constant existence of circumpolar stars, or the very similar motion of the stars near them that do rise and set.

B. L. van der Waerden studied Babylonian astronomy and simply reports they knew Venus as a planet -- long before the Greek astronomers that we know. (You can see this in his "Babylonian Astronomy. II. The Thirty-Six Stars," Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Jan., 1949), pp. 6-26) available at www.jstor.org/stable/542436 .

A lot of sources on-line say the Egyptians and Greeks thought the morning star and evening stars were different stars. But what they actually show is that those people associated different gods to the morning and evening stars. The Egyptians also associated Khepera to the rising sun and Atum to the setting sun, without thinking the rising and setting suns were two different things.

I do not see any evidence of a time when people tried to individuate "stars" as objects but thought the morning star and evening star were two different ones.

Added: Plato's Laws 821-822 has the interlocutors discuss the "impious error" that Greeks make when they believe "Hesperus and Phosphorus and the other planets" wander rather than following a single course. One character asserts "The truth is precisely the opposite: each of them always travels in a circle one and the same path." The other does not disagree. The Greek is no more explicit than the English given here. It does not say anyone thinks "Hesperus and Phoshorus" are two things, and anyway it is discussing an error without saying which Greeks make this mistake. To believe Hesperus follows one circular orbit you would have to believe half of that orbit goes under the name of Phosphorus.

The evening star is generally the name for the first shining planet seen after sunset:

• a planet, especially Venus, that can be seen shining brightly in the west just after the sun has gone down. (Cambridge Dict.)

Venus is also called the morning star when it is visible in the early morning:

• a bright planet, especially Venus, seen in the east immediately before sunrise. (Dictionary.com)

So why does Venus have these nicknames?

• The orbit of Venus is inside the orbit of Earth. Unlike the outer planets, Venus is always relatively close to the Sun in the sky. When Venus is on one side of the Sun, it’s trailing the Sun in the sky and brightens into view shortly after the Sun sets, when the sky is dark enough for it to be visible. When Venus is at its brightest, it becomes visible just minutes after the Sun goes down. This is when Venus is seen as the Evening Star.

• When Venus is on the other side of the Sun, it leads the Sun as it travels across the sky. Venus will rise in the morning a few hours before the Sun. Then as the Sun rises, the sky brightens and Venus fades away in the daytime sky. This is Venus the Morning Star.

Venus:

• is also known as the evening star. It was given that name by ancient civilizations, such as the Greeks and Egyptians, who saw it in the sky. The planet was eventually named after the Roman goddess of love because of its beauty.

The Evening Star is Back: How to Spot Venus

• Since last summer, the dominant evening planet was Jupiter, but that has now changed. As Jupiter sank deeper into the bright glow of evening twilight, Venus emerged.

• Venus is closer to the sun than Earth, so its year — the time it takes to go around the sun — is much shorter than ours. As Venus circles the sun on the inside track, it alternates from our point of view from the morning sky to the evening and back.

• After its last stint in the morning sky, Venus appeared to go behind the sun — what astronomers call "superior conjunction" — on Jan. 11. For weeks it was not visible, mired deep in the brilliant glare of the sun. Yet with each passing day, it has been moving on a slow course to the east, pulling away from the sun from our point of view. (www.space.com)

See Rigid Designators :

Kripke famously argues that because a rigid designator designates the same object in all possible worlds, an identity statement in which both designators are rigid must be necessarily true if it is true at all.

‘Hesperus = Phosphorus’ is necessarily true if true at all because ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ are proper names for the same object. Like other names, Kripke maintains, they are rigid: each designates just the object it actually designates in all possible worlds in which that object exists, and it designates nothing else in any possible world. The object that ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ name in all possible worlds is Venus.

a rigid designator designates its designatum in every possible world containing the designatum and in other possible worlds the designator fails to designate. In places, Kripke suggests that this is his idea:

When I use the notion of a rigid designator, I do not imply that the object referred to necessarily exists. All I mean is that in any possible world where the object in question does exist, in any situation where the object would exist, we use the designator in question to designate that object. In a situation where the object does not exist, then we should say that the designator has no referent and that the object in question so designated does not exist (Kripke, “Identity and Necessity”, 1971, p. 146).

It didn't

Gimli is only saying poetically that he prefers Galadriel to Arwen. Arwen is never referred to as "the Morningstar". You may be confused by the dialogue between Gimli and Éomer:

‘But first I will plead this excuse,’ said Éomer. ‘Had I seen [Galadriel] in other company, I would have said all that you could wish. But now I will put Queen Arwen Evenstar first, and I am ready to do battle on my own part with any who deny me. Shall I call for my sword?’

Then Gimli bowed low. ‘Nay, you are excused for my part, lord,’ he said. ‘You have chosen the Evening; but my love is given to the Morning. And my heart forebodes that soon it will pass away for ever.’

^{The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Many Partings, p. 305}

Arwen's epessë ("after-name") is Undómiel, meaning "twilight star". It was translated into English as "Even[ing]star". There is no real explanation as to why Arwen was named "Evenstar", but my understanding (which may be wrong) is that it has two purposes:

• It recalls Lúthien's own epessë: Tinúviel, "Daughter of Twilight" or "Nightingale". Note that Lúthien is Arwen's great-great-great-grandmother and it was said that in Arwen, "the likeness of Lúthien had come on earth again."
• It shows nostalgia for the ages past, before Elves and their works started fading.

As for Gimli's answer above, it is a play on Arwen's epessë and the relative age between Arwen and Galadriel. At the time of the War of the Ring, Arwen is roughly 2,700 years old, but Galadriel is much older. Her age is not clear because she was born in Valinor before the Years of the Sun, but she could very well be over 10,000 years old.

Being born at the beginning of the Third Age, Arwen would represent the Elves' "evening", at the end of a long and tiresome day, while Galadriel would represent the Elves' "morning", when "the light of Aman was not yet dimmed in their eyes, and they were strong and swift, and deadly in anger, and their swords were long and terrible." Galadriel's golden hair also invokes images of a golden sun in the morning, compared to Arwen's dark hair.

There are several matters here that I will take quite separately.

Isaiah 14:12

1. Satan is not mentioned in this verse - the reference is to "the King of Babylon", V4. However, a common interpretation of Isa 14:12 and the next few verses is that the taunt-song against the king of Babylon is that he represents Satan
2. There is no phrase in the Hebrew that says "Morning Star". The actual phrase is הֵילֵ֣ל בֶּן־שָׁ֑חַר (helel ben shakar) = "Venus son of morning".

• That is the noun "helel" (used only here in Isa 14:12) means "shining one", and was the usual name for what we now call Venus, the second-most inner planet of our solar system.
• In the LXX this becomes ὁ ἑωσφόρος ὁ πρωὶ ἀνατέλλων (ho heosphoros ho proi anatellon) = "the Venus the early rising"
• In the Latin this becomes, Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris = "Venus who rose in the morning"

Note that the word "star" is absent completely. Further, the three names "Helel" (Hebrew), "Heosphoros" (Greek), "Lucifer" (Latin) all mean the same thing - what we call "Venus" in English.

However, various English versions translate this word as either:

• morning star
• evening star
• day star
• Lucifer (ie, leaving the Latin untranslated) ... but all mean the same thing - "Venus".

Rev 22:16

In Rev 22:16 we have the Greek:

ὁ ἀστὴρ ὁ λαμπρός, ὁ πρωϊνός = The star, the radiant, the morning" (very literally)

This is very different from Isa 14:12. Rev 22:16 offers a series of titles for Jesus:

• the root and offspring of David
• the radiant (="bright")
• the star
• the morning

These titles are all unique to Jesus. We also see the title, "Morning Star" for Jesus in 2 Peter 1:19, Rev 2:28.

Arwen was the Evenstar of her people, the last great light of the race of Elves

So it was that Frodo saw her whom few mortals had yet seen; Arwen, daughter of Elrond, in whom it was said that the likeness of Lúthien had come on earth again; and she was called Undómiel, for she was the Evenstar of her people.
The Fellowship of the Ring - Book II, Chapter 1: Many Meetings

The tale of Arwen parallels that of Lúthien, in fact, Arwen was considered as beautiful as her foremother, who was considered the most beautiful elf of all times. The likeness of the two is noted by Aragorn, in the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen¹

and his daughter Arwen Undómiel, who resembles Lúthien closely in looks and fate...
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien - Letter 141, To Naomi Mitchison

Arwen is not a 're-incarnation' of Lúthien (that in the view of this mythical history would be impossible, since Lúthien has died like a mortal and left the world of time) but a descendant very like her in looks, character, and fate.
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien - Letter 153, To Peter Hastings

for Lúthien was the most beautiful of all the Children of Ilúvatar.
The Silmarillion - Chapter 19: Of Beren and Luthien

The name Undomiel was given to Arwen to reflect her beauty during the time of the waning of the Elves in the Age. Arwen was a reflection of the ancient glory of the race of Elves in the Years of the Trees and the First Age at a time when the Firstborn had begun to fade, and the time of Men had begun. Arwen was part of the sixth, and final, union of the Children of Ilúvatar (after Luthien & Beren, Idril & Tuor, Nimloth & Dior, Elwing & Eärendil and Mithrellas and Imrazór). In plighting her troth with Aragorn, Arwen renews the long forgotten alliance between the two races of the Children. Their betrothal represents the passing of the torch, from the Firstborn who had ruled Middle-earth for millennia to the Second-born, who's time was rising. Furthermore, Arwen, alone of the High Elves remains in Middle-earth.

"But first I will plead this excuse," said Éomer. "Had I seen her in other company, I would have said all that you could wish. But now I will put Queen Arwen Evenstar first, and I am ready to do battle on my own part with any who deny me. Shall I call for my sword?"

Then Gimli bowed low. "Nay, you are excused for my part, lord," he said. "You have chosen the Evening; but my love is given to the Morning. And my heart forebodes that soon it will pass away for ever."
The Return of the King: Book VI, Chapter 6: Many Partings

The Evenstar remains in Middle-earth for a time after the beginning of the Age of Men, however the Morning (Galadriel, the last memory of a long forgotten age) passes away forever over the Sea. This again reflects Arwen's fate as the last shining light for the Firstborn in a world of Men.

¹ For Aragorn had been singing a part of the Lay of Lúthien which tells of the meeting of Lúthien and Beren in the forest of Neldoreth. And behold! there Lúthien walked before his eyes in Rivendell, clad in a mantle of silver and blue, fair as the twilight in Elven-home; her dark hair strayed in a sudden wind, and her brows were bound with gems like stars.
For a moment Aragorn gazed in silence, but fearing that she would pass away and never be seen again, he called to her crying, Tinúviel, Tinúviel! even as Beren had done in the Elder Days long ago.
Then the maiden turned to him and smiled, and she said: “Who are you? And why do you call me by that name?”
And he answered: “Because I believed you to be indeed Lúthien Tinúviel, of whom I was singing. But if you are not she, then you walk in her likeness.”
“So many have said,” she answered gravely. “Yet her name is not mine. Though maybe my doom will be not unlike hers. But who are you?”
The Return of the King: Book VII, Appendix A, Part V: Here follows a part of the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen

In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty remarked that to perceive a specific "thing", that thing must stand out from a background from which it differs. A completely isolated object, detached from any context, is impossible to experience.

By stating that one cannot conceive of identity without difference, you are stating the same point IMO, except that you place it in the domain of concepts / logic, while he stated it in terms of perception.

This is actually uncomplicated. There is an important difference between:

Thus, according to the NT we are correctly told that:

the firstborn over all creation. (Col 1:15)

That is, Jesus is:

• the first of the morning stars
• the first of the sons of God
• the first of the sons of men

When we are told that (2 Peter 1:19)

And we have the more certain prophetic word, to which you do well taking heed, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until this day shall have dawned and the morning star shall have arisen in your hearts,

... this states a simple fact - it is via the prophetic Word of God that we learn about Jesus, hidden in our hearts, Ps 40:10, Heb 10:22, 1 Kings 8:58, 1 Thess 3:13, 2 Cor 1:22, 4:6, etc.

No. Some days Venus is an evening star, visible for up to a few hours after the Sun sets. Some days it is a morning star, visible for a few hours before the Sun rises. Some days it is so close to the Sun in the sky that we can't see it at all (or even actually behind the Sun).

Venus can also be seen in daylight, if it is above the horizon, not too close to the Sun and the sky is clear. You need to know where to look for it, though, it's only a little brighter than the sky.

I'm going to be vague on the timing because it depends on what you mean by "determine". Which in turn depends on what is meant by "know" in science. There is a very good model for stars which predicts that balls of plasma that are prevented from collapse by fusion in their cores will look like the sun up close and will look like stars from a distance. So people believe that both the sun and the stars have the same nature. However, while there is direct evidence of nuclear fusion in the sun (neutrinos) there isn't the same evidence of fusion in stars. So it can be argued that this hasn't been "determined", and given the nature of scientific discovery, might never be.

It also depends on what you mean by "the same nature". What if we suppose that two things have the same nature, but are completely wrong about what the nature of the object actually is. We didn't have any real understanding of the core of stars until the 1930s, and we are still filling in the details.

The early claims that the sun is a star were based on general evidence and some incorrect, or at least odd beliefs. Later discoveries showed how starlike the sun actually is but there was no Eureka momement; there is no single event that you can point to in which someone discovered this.

Anaxagoras in the 400s BC suggested this or something like this. He suggested that the sun was a ball of molten metal, and the stars were fiery stones, so something of "the same nature" He proposed that the sun and the stars were torn from the Earth, and then ignited. He probably supposed that meteors were "falling stars" and might have linked meteorites to meteors. He almost certainly believed that the sun was bigger than the stars. So "of the same nature" but the sun was the greatest of the stars. He is significant because he is probably the first to give a physical theory for the nature of an astronomical body. He made the first steps to bringing the study of the heavens within natural philosophy, or "physics".

Anaxagoras was the first to hypothesise that the Sun and the stars might have the same nature.

The notion that the sun is not special is suggested by Copernicus, and there were mutterings about it in the period after Copernicus' publication; it is implicit in some of Galileo's work. However, it was Giordano Bruno who gave full weight to this idea. His evidence seems merely to have been that, if the sun was very distant, it would appear as a star. The observation was naked eye viewing of the sky. He does not seem to have estimated how distant the stars would be, as he had no way of measuring the actual brightness of stars of the sun, but he most clearly declared that:

“The composition of our own star and world is the same as that of as many other stars and worlds as we can see.”

(And by "our own star" he means "the Sun")

It wasn't until the middle of the 18th century that any actual evidence for stars being of the same nature as the sun was found. Angelo Secchi used spectroscopy to analyse starlight, and found that it was very similar to sunlight. By this time though Secchi was confirming the orthodox position rather than proposing a new discovery.

With the measurement of stellar parallax, another piece of the puzzle settled into place, now that the distance to stars could be measured, the were found to comparable to the sun in brightness as well as in spectrum. And developments in nuclear physics in the '30s-'50s showed how stars and the sun could be powered by similar nuclear engines in their cores.

So this question doesn't afford a simple single answer. This wasn't a sudden paradigm shift. Rather it was a gradual process. However, if you need just one name to hang on this idea then Bruno would seem to be the first to clearly assert that stars have exactly the same nature as the sun.

(Much taken from http://www.astronomytrek.com/who-discovered-the-sun-is-a-star/)

The morning star is the planet Venus, thought to be so beautiful that pagans associated it with the goddess Venus. It is natural that in Revelation 22:16 Jesus compares himself to the most admired star in the universe.

Scholars say that Isaiah chapter 14 refers to the king of Babylon, who laid the nations low (Isaiah 14:12). Isaiah talks of the king's pomp and splendour, how he had ruled the nations in anger, and his fate after his overthrow by the king of Persia. He had compared himself to the Morning Star and was thus derisorily called 'Lucifer' (lucem ferre, which mean 'light-bearer', a name for the dawn appearance of the planet Venus) and had thought that he would ascend into heaven and sit among the stars, but was now himself persecuted (Isaiah 14:18-19). They say this text was misunderstood by early Christians, who assumed that it referred to Satan being cast down from heaven.

I think it's important to consider the historical understanding of what a star is. In astronomy today, we consider a star to be:

Wikipedia: an astronomical object consisting of a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its own gravity.

Of course, in ancient times, people had no concept of plasma or gravity; they just looked up in the sky and saw a bunch of pretty lights; some of them wandered around the sky (planets, which as @NigelJ points out, comes from the Greek wandering star); some of them seemed to fall to Earth; etc. So, historically, we didn't really make distinctions among the objects in the sky; they were all stars. (And, of course, there were no space stations in ancient times).

With the invention of telescopes in the early 1600s, we could begin to see that some of the night-time objects were quite different; for example, we could see the moons of Jupiter, and the rings of Saturn. We could also tell that some objects were much closer.

As science continued to develop, we began to study the composition of planets and stars. There's actually a number of pertinent questions on some other Stack Exchange sites you might be interested in:

• Who first distinguished planets from the stars?
• When & how was it known that our Sun is the same thing as the night time stars?
• When and why did the 'spiky star' appear as an image in art and science?
• When did we know the color/appearance of all the planets in our solar system?
• When did people first recognize the estimate sizes/scales and nature of celestial bodies?

I would argue that, at least in English, the word star, by itself, generally refers just to Wikipedia mentions: an astronomical object consisting of a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its own gravity. As you note, the [wictionary] entry also defines star as:

any small luminous dot appearing in the cloudless portion of the night sky, especially with a fixed location relative to other such dots

(emphasis mine).

The term star can today refer to other things: There's different star-shapes we can draw. And we refer to things like shooting stars (meteoroid), the morning/evening star (Venus), etc.

As with anything, the term star may be used a bit more loosely in colloquial vs. scientific settings; however, I believe most people understand the term (by itself) to refer to astronomical stars. That being said, it's important to avoid over-the-top prescriptivism: Don't call Venus the Evening Star: It's a planet! just makes you sound like a tool.

The "we" in this text is referring to the author and readers of the text. John is not counted as being among them.

In a bit more detail, these statements are talking about logical constructs. In essence, if "the morning star" is A, "the evening star" is B, and "Venus" is C, then it asserts that A = B, and then says that if A=C, then B=C as well. However, if you're talking about a specific person who knows that A=C, then it doesn't necessarily follow that they also know that B=C - the two are separate facts that a person could know.

There are some direct correlations, but other words have no direct opposite.

• Dusk - the part where the sun still has some effect in lighting. So this moves around the clock depending on time of year and latitude.
• Evening - 18:00~22:00 regardless of sunlight. Opposite to Morning
• Midnight - anything near 00:00. Opposite to Noon or "Lunch time"
• The Witching Hour - A window of about an hour after midnight. Probably lines up with "Siesta"
• Small or Tiny or Wee Hours - approximately 02:00 to 05:00 where the clock "moves faster" and therefor hours are shorter because most of the population is asleep then. Arguablly this opposes Afternoon.
  Commenteers also added that another reason for the name is the ordinal single digits themselves are small, hence the diminutive
  
• Dawn or first light - where the sun starts having an impact on light levels. Opposite to Dusk.
• Sunrise - when the sun's disk is first visible over the horizon.

"Graveyard shift" implies a longer window, approximately an 8 hour period, so might go from 22:00 to 06:00.
"Morning shift" would then take over and go to 14:00 or a little later.
"Evening shift" fills in the remaining time between 14:00 and 22:00

Some 24-hour outfits run overlapping shifts with a higher staffing level at busy times, so there may be "early/late dinner" shifts, to suit the needs of the business.

It turns out that with your two examples you identified a commonplace ritual complacent sloppiness in the field. Your general treatment of equivalent star products is sound, and best summarized in Francois Bayen's superior and tasteful 1978 talk writeup in the GTMP conference proceedings (Austin, Texas, 1978; Lecture Notes in Physics, 94 , Springer 1978) pp (261-267), where the basic example is treated, as it is also treated in our book, Concise Treatise in Quantum Mechanics in Phase space, WS (2014) eqns (122-131) and especially Exercise 0.21 in that online version.

The point is that constants are easy. For quadratic hamiltoninas like that of the SH oscillator's, and when T is a trivial Weierstrass transform, so, then, the exponential of a bilinear in derivatives, its action on such hamiltonians is trivial: it just shifts them by a constant, $T(H)=H+\gamma$. Since constant terms, hence factors upon exponentiation, etc, slip through star products unseen and unscathed, it is very easy to get complacent, and "do everything in one's head", without adequate explanation. So the unwholesome temptation presents itself to merely shift usage from T(H) to H and the eigenvalues from E+γ to E, and move on, mumbling "yeah, yeah, you know what I mean", thereby confusing readers like you.

Both examples you adduce commit this, coming from different places. However, the referee did his job properly in the published version of D&T since that version explains the stunt in the insert eqns after (29), and before (30), missing from the preprint you cite. (The object of their formal exercise is immaterial here: they translate the Enz trick of modifying the PBs to describe the damped QHO in phase space without any work.)

By contrast, the published version of H&H replicates the fast talking sloppiness, especially virulent for a pedagogical journal like AmJPhys, purporting to educate hapless readers---the referee there clearly failed the process. They use H=(5.3)=T(H)-1/2, so their spectrum is not the correct one, (5.12)+1/2, mumbling right thereafter that it is missing the zero point energy, "yeah, yeah", and forfeiting a teaching moment that journal purports to encourage. Since a constant 1/2 like that does not alter the crucial step in (5.7), and modifies expressions trivially, they shrug it off. Compare with (5.23). This is the celebrated/standard Husimi picture antinormal ordering example that Bayen and we review precisely for its pedagogical value.

Your basic instinct is right: when in doubt, ensure the spectrum is the same, and don't be above including additive factors in the hamiltonian, explicitly. We mostly strive to do this in our book.

Edit to address your update. All formulas and statements in your update are impeccable. Your final formula then says that the $\star_\gamma$ exponential of $H-\gamma/2\omega$ is the rhside you have. So you multiply both sides by $e^{\gamma/2\omega}$ and get the unnumbered eqn of that paper following their (31). You incorporate that factor into the energies of all modes, shifting each by $i\gamma/2\omega$. Their (10) is peculiar to $\star_M$... consider how it is different than Husimi's (Exercise 0.21 in our book). Their (30-31) achieves just what you suggested.

Along roughly the same lines as Mr. Dant, I would say star can be used to refer to a planet in only two context in contemporary English:

1. A mistake of ignorance when looking up into the sky. That star is pretty bright.

2. Some specialized usage in astrology.

We could not say two hundred thousand people are living on that star.

Addendum, if we use the plural "stars", then we can say things like:

And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. (Deuteronomy 4:19, ESV)

or

When I look at the stars, I think all of the people in the universe.

We know that "stars" would include the stars and the planets. This usage of "the stars" is a synonym for "the heavens"

the best generic term we have is the scientific one "celestial body." In popular usage, I (being completely ignorant of astronomy) might call anything I look up and see at night (other than the moon or a plane) a star.

Most of us have believe we know things or are justified in believing things that, except on a rigid version of determinism or fatalism, could have been other than they are. It is metaphysically possible that time is unreal or that the so-called external world is an illusion. That we can conceive of these metaphysical possibilities goes no way towards proving that they are true or even physically possible.

The most that Descartes conceivability argument shows is that we can conceive of ourselves as minds distinct from bodies. By the same logic as Descartes' we can conceive of the Morning Star as distinct from the Evening Star and both as distinct from the planet Venus. All these contingencies are metaphysically possible but in fact the Morning Star, the Evening Star and the planet Venus are identical : they are all one object differently referred to.

So why shouldn't mind and body be one and the same thing differently referred to? The fact, if it is one (a separate but related question) that we really can conceive a mind without a body does not prove or support dualism any more than the conceivability of the distinctness of the Morning Star, the Evening Star and the planet Venus proves the 'triadicity' of the relevant astronomical bodies.

An exceptionally bright star in the morning or evening is usually the planet Venus.

In May 2017, Venus is rising about two hours before the sun, and is by far the brightest star-like object in the morning sky. As it moves around the sun, it will get less bright. In a telescope, you would see it change from a crescent at the beginning of the month, to a semi-circle by the end. #

Planetarium software, such as Stellarium, can show the position of stars and planets at a given time and so help identify stars and planets.

Look out for Venus on the Morning of May 22, when it will be close to the crescent moon.

When did astronomy first discover that the stars are bigger than the moon?

Your choice of words "discovery" implies evidence, not just hypothesis. The discovery that stars were like our sun wasn't possible until the distance to some nearby stars was measured and with that, a brightness comparison could be made between stars and our sun. That discovery was made in 1838.

The first person with that theory goes back to 450 BC. Short summary and longer summary.

Quote:

Anaxagoras, who lived in Athens, Greece, around 450 BC (about 2450 years ago), thought that the Sun and stars were fiery stones, that the stars were too far away for their heat to be felt, and that the Sun was perhaps more than a few hundred miles in size. With that Anaxagoras was, as far as we know, the first one to suggest that the Sun is a star. His ideas were met with disapproval and he was finally imprisoned for impiety, because his ideas did not fit the prejudices of the time.

So, while he suggested that stars were like our sun, his size was way off and it's unclear how large he thought the Moon was, or even, if he had a good idea how large the Earth was. Erastosthenes' estimate came later.

Aristarchus of Samos came up with a much better, but still quite inaccurate, measure of the Sun and Moon's size and he recognized that the Moon was smaller than the Earth and the Sun much larger. It's unclear what he thought about stars though.

And much more recently:

Christiaan Huygens of Holland lived from 1629 to 1695. He determined the distance to the star Sirius, assuming that that star was as bright as the Sun and appeared faint only because of its great distance. He found that the distance to Sirius must be very great. At this time, then, the idea that the Sun is a star was considered seriously by scientists.

So the idea that stars were like our sun was popular and perhaps even accepted, for over 100 years before the size and brightness of stars was first accurately measured.

Did people believe that the moon was bigger than the stars for a long time?

This is hard to say. Aristarchus of Samos ideas were less popular than Aristotle's (who came a little earlier) and Aristarchus' theories weren't central to Ptolomy's model which became the model for over 1000 years. I've often wondered what might have been different if Aristotle and Aristarchus could have exchanged ideas. Aristotle might have learned something and re-written his model, but Aristarchus was born too late.

Ptolomy, who's model was accepted by the Roman Catholic Church, didn't pay much attention to sizes and, in fact, his model doesn't account for size well at all. It's one of the ways that his model breaks down, but his basic model had the Moon closer to the Earth than the Sun, so presumably he recognized that the Sun was larger than the Moon and it's not unreasonable to guess that Ptolomy might have said the planets are smaller than the moon. The stars, however, were for the most part, not addressed.

If your question is, in particular, what Aristotle, Ptolemy up through scholars in the middle ages thought about the size of stars in comparison to the moon, then, I have to say that I don't know what was assumed about the size of the Moon and stars, though Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for suggesting stars were like our sun. It's entirely possible most scholars thought stars were smaller than the Moon from the time periods between Aristotle to Kepler. If someone knows more specifics, I encourage them to answer.

Not long after Galileo and Kepler, it seems to have become more generally accepted that stars were large and very distant and the Moon was relatively small by comparison.

Isaiah 14:12 "morning star" = "rule over nations"

Always look back to "first mention" or "earlier" mention, then notice trends

Isaiah 14:12 (NASB, emphasis added)

How you have fallen from heaven,

O star of the morning, son of the dawn!

You have been cut down to the earth,

You who have weakened the nations!

This is a reference to Babylon in the context, and in 14:12 it also mentions "nations".

Isaiah 14:4a (NASB)

that you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon, and say,

Basically, Babylon once ruled nations, then lost it all. V12 refers to Babylon ('you') as the star of the morning. So...

"ruler of nations" = "star of the morning"

So, it looks like Jesus is saying:

"I will give him rule of the nations."

That's a reasonable theory, at least to weigh up against other study. So, let's test the theory...

You're in Revelation 2:28. Go back and look at 2:26-27

Revelation 2:26-27 (NASB, emphasis added)

26 'He who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end, TO HIM I WILL GIVE AUTHORITY OVER THE NATIONS; 27 AND HE SHALL RULE THEM WITH A ROD OF IRON, AS THE VESSELS OF THE POTTER ARE BROKEN TO PIECES, as I also have received authority from My Father;

There you go. It all agrees. Now, you have something to study for the next ten years (because Bible study never ends). ;-)

Additional note:

Kings 'break pottery'

"Breaking pottery" is something invading kings would do when asserting power over a conquered people. "Breaking clay vessels" is also the act of a ruler with authority over government. Consider what my awesome prof, Walton, says about pottery in Psalm 2:9 in his IVP Bible Background Commentary.

Breaking pottery is also a Biblical reference to Jeremiah 19:1-11, also the act of a king.