2005-10-01

Decided to have a go at finding Venus during the day. Not the best of days to try given that there was a lot of cloud around — I'd estimate that at least 75% of the sky was covered with cloud.

I first checked the location of Venus with Starry Night to be sure of where I needed to look (roughly South and about 20° above the horizon). I positioned myself against the wall of our garage so that I was in its shadow — that way there was no chance of me accidently looking at the Sun while scanning with the binocular.

By about 14:33 UT I found Venus. I made sure that no cloud was going to get in the way for the next minute and then put the binocular down and looked with the naked eye. I could find Venus with no problem. I looked away for a few moments and looked back again and could still see it.

I popped indoors to make the above note and then popped back out again. This time I couldn't find the planet either with naked eye or with the binocular. I think this was probably because it was being obscured by cloud.

By 14:46 UT more cloud was moving in, some of which was looking like it might give rain, so I ended the session. Had the weather been more favourable I would have taken the 130M out into the garden and had a look though that.