The Venus Hall of Fame: why the brightest "unidentified light" is a planet

Venus is the most reported unidentified object in history. Pilots, police officers, a sitting US president (Jimmy Carter, 1969) and thousands of people every year have reported it.

Why it fools everyone:
- It is far brighter than any star, bright enough to cast faint shadows and to be seen in daylight if you know where to look.
- It sits low in the west after sunset or low in the east before sunrise, right where aircraft fly.
- Low in the sky it twinkles and shifts color through turbulent air, so it looks like it is flashing or moving.
- It follows the sky's rotation, so over an hour it drifts and sets, which reads as "it slowly flew away".
- If you are driving, it appears to pace your car.

The tell: it never gets closer, never blinks in a pattern, and is in the same part of the sky every evening for weeks.

Jupiter does the same trick a little less brightly, and Mars when it is close to Earth. The case page shows which planets were up and in which direction, so check the "Planets up" line before anything else.