What should have been in the Sydney sky this morning?
Hello all.
Was looking up at the sky this morning in Sydney, about 730am, describing to a friend how contrails are formed. Was looking into the NNE, at about 50 degrees elevation (no fancy astro terms here, sorry).
Anyway, it was a beautiful blue sky here this morning, and as I was looking along the contrail I commented that...wow, there's a balloon passing right through the contrail (or so it looked). Turns out the contrail was moving and the object was stationary. It looked like a star, or venus, except it was in broad daylight. It was easily visible when looking in the right direction, and we looked at it until we thought we should go ahead and get some work done.
So, astro-types; what astronomical object was up there this morning?
It sounds like it probably was Venus. It's in the right vicinity. Although at that time of day, I'm not sure that you would've seen Venus without optical aid (binoculars etc).
Venus can be visible in daylight sometimes if you know where to look.
My money would be on Venus as well. It's generally not noticed at that time of the morning against the blue background, but if you were looking at the contrail which was in the vicinity of Venus you may have picked it up. How bright was the object to which you refer. Colour?
I wouldn't normally decribe Venus as looking like a balloon though
It was white, and easily visible. Kind of hard to describe, but with the relative motion against the contrail, it looked like a small balloon at altitude.
I looked very carefully for any dimming or occulting due to the other clouds passing in between it and my field of vision, but I could detect none at all. Very strange!
And I now have the afternoon off to think about it some more.
Venus can be easily visible even at midday... finding it is the hard part.
Pilots of radio controlled planes often spot it drifting past their model... or more correctly, their model drifting past it.
I was going to say, to test that it is Venus, go out and check the next day. If its in the same place at the same time it has to be Venus. Its easy enough to see with out binos - Jupiter, well, thats a different story...
but you have certainly encountered a special sighting, 
now get back to work man. 
