Hi, newbie to telescopes, just bought my first (off IIS) and have a couple of questions. Here is the first.
The first is how to know when and where a planet is visible. Venus (I'm pretty sure it's Venus) is visible here in Surfers Paradise at sunset for a few hours.
I wrote a little program to produce the planetary data (altitude, azimuth, declination & right ascension). According, with azimuth being 227 deg. at 6pm, I would expect Venus to be 133 deg from north, therefore in the south-western sky. However it is basically due west, so about 90 deg off magnetic north.
What am I doing wrong? (Please confine yourselves just to this question, please
)