Strange bright light in the western part sky

[acharris77]

Hey all, I was out just standing on the door when I look to the western / touch of the NW part of the sky at about 11pm and I see a bright white light in the sky, low on the horizion. It is moving with the sky, but looking at it with 10 x 50 binos it looks wierd, couldnt view it with the scope due to my neighbour fence or image it with the 1000d.

I thought it was Mars or venus, but it looked to high above the horizion for venus, and not over far enough to be mars and seems to be big in diameter. Can anyone help, as I have looked at stellarium and cant seem to find anything as such. Thanks.

[cloud9]

The Moon?

Was it a bright flash or fixated in the sky?

[acharris77]

LOL with the moon. A little too small for the moon, unless it has shrunk and all its craters have been filled in....lol. It was fixated in the sky, as it was there also Wednesday night, and it was moving and dropping down to the horizion like it was moving in orbit.

Will try and capture something, unless I got a Alien watching me watching the skies, as with binos it looked like a shape, but way too high of the ground to be a tower or mast, and also it was never there before. Thanks.

[barkis]

You more than likely were seeing Venus. It would be to the right of a crescent moon.

Ron.

[LukeSkywatcher]

Venus is gone from my viewing location by about 9:30pm so i am guessing that by 11pm it would be pretty low down to the horizon.

My money is on it being Venus.

[Talitha]

Hi Anthony, i'm not sure where you're located but i've got London listed as an observing site in my SkyTools3 program, and the horizon simulation for 11pm shows Venus between 5 and 6 degrees above the horizon in the W/NW. When bright objects are close to the horizon, they look weird because of the atmospheric turbulence.

[acharris77]

Thanks for that I am near cardiff, that sounds about right, as been looking today on stellarium and it was the only thing that could be bright enough to be there, just it looked quite big obviously due to the atmosphere down low. thanks again for the help.

[toml42]

Will try and capture something, unless I got a Alien watching me watching the skies, as with binos it looked like a shape, but way too high of the ground to be a tower or mast, and also it was never there before. Thanks.

interestingly a good portion of reported UFO sightings are in fact of Venus close to the horizon. Sirius is another popular case of mistaken identity and fertile imagination, the flashes of colour one often sees when viewing sirius low down don't help!