Venus is back

[N1]

One of my favourite astro pursuits - daytime planet spotting. Managed to find Venus a degree and a half E of the Sun yesterday. Superior conjunction wasn't all that long ago. Today's Soho pic attached & rotated to illustrate position (credit: SOHO LASCO C2) . Disk very obvious at 90x :thumbsup:

[Tropo-Bob]

That is incredible. Well done!

[Tinderboxsky]

Yes, fabulous result.
How did you align the scope? I am thinking you have set it up and waited for the Sun to drift behind the roof line and for Venus to drift into view. Were you using a relatively narrow AFOV eyepiece?

[bigjoe]

Thanks for sharing Mirko.
Not enough do this...
Never done this myself on Venus .

I Twice found Saturn and Mars though, just after morning twilight , and was surprised just how much easier it was to pick out details.. Syrtis , and the Cassini division both times visually.
bigjoe.

[bigjoe]

Thats a great way of doing it Steve..good thinking.
bigjoe.

[N1]

Thanks guys. The method employed here involved aiming at where Venus should be according to planetarium app, but with a Baader film filter on the scope so the Sun's edge could be used as a guide. Great for getting focus right too. I used a 13T6 Nagler for that. Obviously the Sun was placed so that it had all but disappeared behind the gutter when this was done, and once it had gone from the FoV, AND no direct sunlight was reaching the objective, the filter came off, and...bam, there she was. Careful centering and replacing the Nagler with a Pentax XP3.8 (40°AFOV) finished the job. This sounds tedious but is easy with this setup. The scope & tripod light enough that this process could be repeated easily in less than a minute by moving the whole telescope as required. The "drift" method would work too, though it would take longer and works best when the target trails the Sun more or less exactly. The latter wasn't the case with Venus at a different declination to that of the Sun. Also used a UV/IR cut filter for an extra bit of notional safety.

This one was easier than the one 3 years ago (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=127705)