On the earth in SE, you are able to see the beautifully bright sun during the day... as well as many other stars. This is impossible, of course, as the sun far outshines these other stars and atmospheric scattering adds to our inability to see any other stars during the day.
Am I using incorrect settings, or is this a current bug?
Added (15.02.2014, 11:51) --------------------------------------------- Correction: the bright dots I can see in the sky are planets, not stars. However, this is still essentially impossible, or at least very unrealistic.
Not quite; Venus is visible even at midday, and Jupiter also becomes visible around sunset.
Around sunset you can see not only Venus and Jupiter, but also Mars, Mercury and perhaps even Saturn (not sure about this one). Planets are bright. Ditto for the brightest stars, like Vega.
It depends on location. If you live in a dusty or smoggy place, you won't be able to see much. If you live in a place of clear skies, you'll see plenty.
Yes, Venus is visible in broad daylight to the unaided eye (some also say they can spot Jupiter, but this is much more difficult and I've never been able to do it). Helps to have the Moon nearby so that your eyes have something to focus on. Without that I find it nearly impossible. If the Moon is eclipsing the Sun then that helps a bunch, too.
But to rosstex's post, SE does show the planets too visibly from the Earth's daytime surface. Auto-exposure helps, making only Venus visible as far as I can tell, but it is still not a perfect representation of reality. You can't just look up at noon in real life and immediately pick it out. The reason for the disparity is pretty technical, getting into optics and how our visual sensory works vs. how SE displays things. I'd say it's pretty well close enough though, and you can fix the view to your liking by adjusting the limiting magnitude.
Unless Mars is extremely close like in 2003. It can get brighter than Jupiter on such rare occasions. But yeah, your location on Earth doesn't change their brightness.