[Tinderboxsky (Steve)]

I did not think I had a chance of viewing this event today. There was fast forming and moving medium level cloud with a lot of high level haze and close to gale force winds. I set up in our rear courtyard for some wind protection.

A large cloud bank at least did it’s job by hovering firmly in front of the Sun for the duration. The edge of this cloud bank retreated sufficiently to expose the Moon and Venus for the final the 15 minutes of approach. Venus was bright and jewel like and the faint and very fine crescent Moon only just visible in the high level haze. The disappearance was to occur near the end of the fine crescent and that part of the crescent was almost invisible making it appear like a disappearance on the dark side. Venus took about 10 seconds (I was not counting) to fade progressively as the Moon’s limb slowly slid across Venus.

Whilst waiting for the re-appearance, I thought I should try for Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn as they are all in the day time sky at the moment. 
I slewed to Mercury (closer to Sun) - it was fainter than Venus but still jewel like. Mars was only 1 degree further east but was not visible through the haze. A pity as the pair would have been a nice catch in the same 2 degree FOV. I tried Jupiter on the east side of the Sun but it was hidden by too much high haze. There was too much cloud low in the east, so I did not even try for Saturn.

The Venus re-appearance was tantalisingly hidden behind the fringes of the hovering large cloud bank. So I missed the re-apperance. A very small break gave me a glimpse of Venus and the crescent Moon 90 sec after the re-appearance.

Scope: Vixen ED103S with Panoptic 24 giving 33X. Perhaps a photo tells a better story!