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Hello, there aren't any plants that low in the northern sky, actually you'll never see them in the northern sky their orbits are closer to the ecliptic plane which would be a line from east to west.

I do believe that bright stars appears so because the lens is out of focus making the star seem much bigger. Keep trying

LtBadd is absolutely correct - Not a planet. Looking at the dimmer surrounding stars you have a picture of constellation Lyra and the bright star is Vega. And as he said keep trying - It's not that hard to get some great constellation shots - focus at infinity (distance / mountain), put the camera on a tripod and keep the shutter open for 15-20 seconds.

Bill, I was looking at your Exif file. Wow, f/1.4. I can only get down to f/4.5 if I'm lucky. Most times the lowest will go is f/5.6.

My old Nikon would focus good on infinity for such shots, but my Nikon D5000 will not be focused at infinity. If I can't get it to Auto Focus, then I have to do Manual focusing which is rather hard for me to do. That's why I mainly stick to Moon shots, cause I can Auto-Focus there, in most cases.
Hopefully your camera will focus good on infinity, like my old camera does.