We are in Green Lake, WI, 8/12/18, seeing bright orange “planet”/“star” almost due South, perhaps 20 degrees above horizon, what is it?

Question

I have a “sky” app on my ipad and expected it to be Mars, but my app shows Mars just below horizon and closer to East. Oh, I should add that we saw this about 10:15 tonight. Hanging out watching meteor shower, orange object didn’t move much, if at all. I’ve never seen something so orange (or perhaps it is more red).

Answer 1

Not all sky apps get DST right or compute planetary positions accurately. Stellarium at your location shows Mars 17 degrees above the SSE horizon at 22:15 CDT, or 20 degrees above due south at 23:45. Skymaps.com northern edition also shows Mars above the horizon before 10 PM in mid-August. As Mars is unusually close to Earth this summer, it appears brighter than usual--and orange as usual.