{"id":259,"date":"2017-03-26T09:20:02","date_gmt":"2017-03-26T09:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/?p=259"},"modified":"2017-03-26T09:29:06","modified_gmt":"2017-03-26T09:29:06","slug":"venus-inferior-conjunction-25th-march-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/venus-inferior-conjunction-25th-march-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Venus at Inferior Conjunction – 25th March 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the day of Venus at Inferior conjunction, I was hoping to catch the very thin crescent of the\u00a0planet just over 8 degrees from the Sun.<\/p>\n

It was always going to be a challenge in the bright daytime sky, but as the Sun (and Venus) got higher, high wispy clouds crept across the sky, producing a very “nice” solar halo.
\n\"\"
\nThis was going to make the sky around the planet extremely bright, making contrast\u00a0between planet and sky very difficult.<\/p>\n

I used a 120 mm refractor for safety purposes. I didn’t want to risk using the Mak-Newt that close to the Sun.<\/p>\n

All lined up and projecting the Sun’s image, I then told the scope to go up to Venus.
\nIt loyally obliged and I was pointed at a very bright patch of sky.<\/p>\n

Luckily the scopes were positioned in a way that the main scope, with it’s cover safely on, shaded the end of the refractor and finder scope.<\/p>\n

Looking through the finder, I moved the scope slowly around, making sure I didn’t go towards the Sun. The contrails and cloud could be seen easily, but no sign of the planet.<\/p>\n

With my usual perseverance, I \u00a0kept at my vigil and the whiteness started to look a little more blue. It was still very wishy-washy, but it had cleared a little.<\/p>\n

Then I spotted the thin crescent planet in the finder. Once found, it was a case of moving the scope so the planet was centred then looking through the main scope. It was there!<\/p>\n

It looked absolutely amazing. So thin and bright. How had I missed it before I found it?
\nI cranked up the magnification by changing eyepiece. The crescent was wildly dancing about\u00a0from atmospheric turbulence.<\/p>\n

Now to get the webcam on it and focused. Now that’s easily said than done! Especially trying to work on a computer screen in the sunlight.\u00a0I faffed about for ages, but finally I could see the small out of focus crescent on the screen. A few adjustments and I took my avi to capture the moment.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I then decided to go live on Facebook.<\/p>\n

Once this was done I put in the 2x Barlow Lens to magnify the image.
\nThen after a lot of messing around (again!) I finally got a bigger image back on the screen.<\/p>\n

I took my avi to capture the moment and then went live once again.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Thank fully the image was a bit better focussed this time.<\/p>\n

Objective achieved, I was a very happy man.<\/p>\n

It was clear that night as well, but I was so tired, I gave it a miss.<\/p>\n

No dedication!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the day of Venus at Inferior conjunction, I was hoping to catch the very thin crescent of the\u00a0planet just over 8 degrees from the Sun. It was always going to be a challenge in the bright daytime sky, but as the Sun (and Venus) got higher, high wispy clouds crept across the sky, producing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"Venus at Inferior Conjunction - 25th March 2017 - Star-Gazing","description":"On the day of Venus at Inferior conjunction, I was hoping to catch the very thin crescent of the\u00a0planet just over 8 degrees from the Sun. It was always going to"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":266,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions\/266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.star-gazing.co.uk\/WebPage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}