↓
 

Venus with the naked eye in Daylight

Urban Astronomer avatarPosted on by
Astronomy within Reach, by Neville Young

Thanks to some excellent advice from Neville Young, in his new book Astronomy within Reach, we can all amaze and astound our friends by helping them to see the planet Venus with the naked eye, in full daylight.  Regular readers will have already seen photographs showing that such a thing is possible, and should have worked out that Venus is bright enough to show up well against the blue daytime sky.  The problem is that the human eye has an autofocus feature which is really hard to override, and if there is nothing clear to focus on then it defaults to a distance of only a few meters.  Even if you happen to be looking at the exact spot in the sky, your eye cannot resolve the tiny white pinprick of Venus when it’s so far out of focus, and so it remains invisible. 

Fortunately, Venus often passes near the Moon, and if you know when these conjunctions will occur, you can use the moon to get focus, and then let your gaze drift a degree or two in the right direction to spot Venus as clear as, well, daylight!  There are a few such times coming up for the rest of 2012:  13 and 14 August, 12 September, 12 October and 11 November.  For more details on when and where to look, and what makes those particular dates better than other conjunctions, visit Neville’s webpage at http://www.starwaders.com.
Liked it? Take a second to support Allen Versfeld on Patreon!
Become a patron at Patreon!
Posted in News and Updates permalink

About Allen Versfeld

Allen is an amateur astronomer, an IT professional, a podcaster, a father of five beautiful kids, a barely competent chess player, and the owner and publisher of the Urban Astronomer podcast and website. He is also the director of the Citizen Science Section of the Astronomical Society of South Africa, where he tries to help ASSA members do good work with citizen science projects. Now on Mastodon!

Comments

Venus with the naked eye in Daylight — 2 Comments

  1. I like to read your articles they have made me to marvel the night skies. Where can a find a small telescope.

    Reply ↓

    • Thank you! There aren’t a lot of places that sell decent telescopes in Southern Africa. The ones that comes to mind are http://www.telescopeshop.co.za, http://www.eridanusoptics.co.za, http://www.foton.co.za and shop.technopro.co.za
      Camera and Department stores sometimes sell them as well, but be careful not to buy anything that makes a big deal about how many x magnification it has – those are toys and will disappoint. There are brands like Bushnell, Tasco and K-Way which… honestly I’m not sure. I’ve never used one, and people generally say not to buy them. But they are real telescopes, and if they are all you can find in your area, and you can afford them, then I suppose it’s better than nothing. But if you have the option, I would suggest rather buy something from Orion, Sky Watcher, Celestron or Meade. There are other brands that are much better (and much much more expensive!), but if you know about those, then you don’t need my advice!
      Most important things to remember: Bigger is better (and I’m talking the diameter of the tube, not the length), and you need a decent mount for the telescope, otherwise it will wobble and shake so much that you can’t see anything.

      Reply ↓

Like what you read? Hate it? Write a reply:

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

↑
%d bloggers like this: