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Venus crosses the meridian due north at about 2:50pm at the moment (changes slightly daily) and if you set up facing north and scan the sky with binoculars from horizon upward at just prior to that time you will find it. (Make sure your focus is set to infinity or a distant tree). CAREFUL NOT TO GO ANYWHERE WEST OF NORTH TO AVOID THE SUN. In fact once you find it with bino's you will also spot it visually unaided as it is bright enough. Then try and find it with the telescope and again be careful of pointing it anywhere near the Sun. Place an extra long dew/sun shield on the end of your 'scope to make sure you don't get any off-axis rays entering the tube.
Stellarium will provide you with the time of the north passage and the angle above the ground. (Turn on Alt/Az grid and N hor at the bottom of the screen with enough zoom to just show the horizon at the bottom with a slight curve). When Venus crosses the meridian it will be at its highest point on a given day and will offer you better seeing than when it is lower in the sky.
The cross you see is diffraction spikes caused by the secondary spider vanes and you will not see them in the daytime. Venus is gibbous at the moment and will grow in size and become crescent shaped over the next few months. See if you can observe when the phase is exactly 50% (Dichotomy) as it is quite a sight.
I recently enjoyed observing Venus over a three day period around 2:30pm with an 80mm ED refractor and the image was quite impressive at around 187x. I could even see subtle differences in brightness in the cloud layer.
Today Venus is about 15 arcsec in diameter with a phase of 0.73. Dichotomy will occur around Aug 17 (phase 0.5) and maximum diameter of 61.5 arcsec (phase 0.006) will be on Oct 29 (inferior conjunction with Sun and too close to observe).
Mars will be 24.3 arc sec in Jul 27, 2018. This year Mars got to 14.1 arcsec in Jan 29.
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