It was about 7:25 PM and the night was calm and clear. I first noticed the brightly shining object NE of my position at about 75 degrees from the horizon. It was traveling quite rapidly and steadily, bearing about 100, maintaining the same altitude as far as I could tell, and appeared to be about 1 1/2 to maybe 3 miles away when I first noticed it. At its nearest, had it been a prop plane and certainly a jet or helicopter, I would have heard some noise (particularly on a calm night), but in this case I didn't hear anything. It had no navigation lights nor blinking lights that I could see. It appeared to be about 3 times the size of Venus at its brightest, from my perspective. What struck me as odd was the lack of noise and nav lights as well as the fact that it appeared as lit brightly white and was traveling away from me. It would make sense if it was coming straight at me with 1 landing light on. I called my wife over to where she could see and we watched it fade many miles away to the brightness of a typical star then finally lost sight of it. It lasted about 3 minutes total.In comparison, as I type this I could hear a prop plane from inside the house. When I stepped out to look at it, it's white tail light was maybe the brightness of the north star and it had clearly visible navigation lights and a white flashing anti-collision light. I would estimate it to be 3-4 miles away and moving very slow relative to the earlier aircraft I saw.