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Looming Venus
on July 4
from
Rumor Mill Message Board

As I write these words [Jul 4], above me to the East here in Washington State there is a large brilliantly white and fiery looking object that has just appeared in the morning sky. The sun has now been up for more than 30 minutes [Jul 4] here in Washington, and the object is just now fading from the naked eye. It is still easily dicernable with binoculars however. If Venus is indeed the culprit here, then the planet is obviously being affected in some way that makes it brighter, much brighter than normal. At 4:50 this morning, Venus must have just taken her steroids. She was nearly one eighth the size of the full moon! It's accompaning object may be the star, Aldebaran! In all my years of observing Venus, that old gal [Jul 4] has never looked this gussied up!

I think you saw it much bigger then I did. You said one eighth the size of the full moon? Over here in Israel [Jul 4] it was about half that or even less, I think but still by far the largest, brightest object I or anyone else that I shown this to in the past month, have ever seen!

From my point of view [Jul 4] it was about 80 degrees compass heading from magnetic north in Arizona, which is aprox 7 degrees off from true North due to bending of the magnetics in this region. [Note: this equates to Azi 73° where East is Azi 90°] I am a shiftworker, and was on nights and days this last week. This object was noted by myself and co-workers all during that time; although granted this morning [Jul 4] it was extra bright to me here in ol Arizona. I went to my favorite planetary applet:
http://www.jgiesen.de/planets/index.html I typed in all the needed perameters, and it showed that Venus was the culprit, per the applet anyhow. But according to the applet, for the Washington State view, it should have been at 24 degrees inclination. This bright object was 35 degrees, easy from the horizon, once again too high per the applets.

From Switzerland. What you have just seen may explain what I saw yesterday morning [Jul 3] here. What I saw, no binoculars, was a very bright ball to the right of the rising sun. The sun has been rising further northeast for this past week. I watched it from about 4:30 a.m. my time when it was larger, nearer obviously, and then over a period of about an hour, it moved southeast. Sunlight was streaming from the northeast, this bright ball which had seemed to me as well like Venus in the wrong place.

I live in Melbourne, Australia, right down South. My friend rang me last Wed, 30th June at 6.30 AM telling me to go outside and look at the huge star in the eastern sky, to the north part of East. It was indeed huge, as you describe, with a smaller star also.

I am in Texas and this morning [Jul 5] saw the largest bright star or planet or something else. It was around 5:20 AM you could see it until the sun came up, even then a little bit. I have nver seen anything in the sky like it, it was huge! Relative to a normal star you see in the sky it looked 100x larger.

I saw it this AM [Jul 6] in Kentucky about 6 AM. It was extremely bright.

It is not Venus , Venus has phase like the Moon now . The object is not round, it seems an asteroid near the earth.

I got up at 5 AM [Jul 6] to have a gander at it and was surprised at how bright it was. Under high magnification looks like a cresent moon object. If it an asteroid then its huge. From Arizona

I am in Western Pennsylvania and have been watching this object in the morning sky for about a week now. It appears around 5:30 AM in a SE position.

Here in Indonesia 5:27 AM [Jul 6], Venus is huge. I am not an astronomer but I never seen Venus that big.

She is the brightest twinkler [Jul 7] I´ve ever seen in the skies so far in my life. She looks like a distant immobile spotlight.

It is now 5:17 Eastern Times [Jul 7] and I see a very bright object rising in the skies here, where the sun rises. The atmosphere makes it glow with a slight halo around it. Its the brightest object in my sky right now.

From Texas, so went and looked [Jul 7] myself and it was Venus. Back when it was in the evening sky, I looked at it through binoculars one night and it had that same weird look.

I live in New Zealand, and I work a couple of nights a week from 3-7 AM. I have been watching this planet for the last couple of months. It certainly seems to be Venus, as I watched it before the transit of Jun 8 (when it disappeared in the Sun´s glare), and then picked it up again more recently when it got far enough from the sun to be visible again. At this time of the year here, we don´t always have clear skies, but we did this morning [Jul 7], and I couldn´t take my eyes of Venus. I compared the size and brightness to some street lamps a couple of blocks away, and it was about the same. I´ve been working these hours for years, and I have never seen Venus look like that.