(03-21-2022, 05:21 PM)PeterB Wrote: March 21 2022
Today is the unofficial first day of spring and it is the first day in many when my local skies have been clear.

Venus is visible during the daylight hours right now and will be for many more days.  I had always heard about spotting Venus during the day but personally I never had much luck with it.  A few days ago out of frustration I carefully calculated the correct azimuth and altitude from my back yard for a pre-selected observation time -- and then of course the clouds, rain and fog set in!  Finally this morning it was beautifully clear. A few minor updates to my calculations and I had a pretty good idea where to look in the sky.

I saw nothing with my naked eye at first. I scanned the area systematically with a good set of 7 X 50 binoculars  and Venus popped into view after a few passes, but I still couldn't find it with my naked eyes.

I wondered if I would be able to see it in a sextant scope so I fetched my Simex Mk 1 with a 4 -40 star scope and tried with that -- no luck

Eventually Venus moved enough in my local sky that I was able to fix its location against a tree branch in the foreground and then, with a little patience, and being careful to rest my head against a wall as I sat on my back porch so as to not move at all, I was able to pick up Venus with my naked eyes.

Once I had a naked eye view I could get it easily into the 4x40 scope but it was faint enough that it was still difficult to bring down. I didn't have a real horizon, only a fence rail, so this wasn't going to be an accurate sight, just fun practice.

I switched over to my humble Davis Mk3 "Lifeboat" sextant with a 0 power sight tube and therefore a huge field of view, and with that simple sextant it was possible to bring Venus down to my fence rail.

The trickiest part was to get to the point of picking it up with my naked eyes. This required a perfectly fixed position for myself and my head for the first cut. Once I had acquired it naked eye I easily re-acquired it naked eye -- at least for about 15 or 20 minutes.

All in all I was pleased to be able to engage in this exercise in my back yard, but I'm glad I wouldn't have to rely upon it from a moving, rocking boat! That would be very tough!

PeterB

It's hard enough to get a star at dusk! I'm just back from the beach where I hoped to get shots of a whole bunch of stars around Orion. As I parked the bike, I could see Sirius, Betelgeuse and Procyon. Swung up the sextant and got a shot of Sirius - and then the horizon just faded away! At least the Sirius LOP came out pretty close.

I was given a hint some while back, that you could get star sights at night time with a little moonlight to illuminate the horizon, I guess you would really need the Moon behind you so that the stars were not drowned out and the waves would shine with reflected light. Something to try!