I deliberately waited until after upper conjunction, to ensure the Sun was leading the target so it would not move into the FOV by accident if the scope was not moved fast enough. At this separation we are talking minutes.
The technique used was ridiculously simple. Set up scope inside a suitable shadow, then peer past the object casting the shadow at your target. Use small apertures and small AFOV eyepieces. Aperture definitely does not rule here, nor do wide angle EPs.
I attach a couple more shots for illustration. The building is the Beverly Begg Observatory in Dunedin. The eyepiece view is the low power view from a 25mm symmetric PL I use for finding. 15x and perhaps 45° AFOV (more like an Abbe than a Plössl). TVOF about 3° perhaps. Image has not been processed, flipped or rotated - this is the actual view. Venus is the dot in the centre, among some high cloud. The dark area in the upper left is the edge of the building with the Sun behind it. It becomes obvious in this shot that Venus would have been observable even closer to that dark edge, i.e. at even closer separation from the Sun. I consider separations of less than 1° to be perfectly feasible. Ah well, next time...
