Brilliant Venus

[kerrylewis]

The skies cleared later than forecast here but still enabled a view of Venus. Very bright and a true beacon in the sky as it's often described. Lovely crescent through the bins. Worth getting up for after all the wind, rain and clouds.

[Pete Presland]

it is a cracking sight in the morning! i snapped it during the week with the moon, between the showers. 

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/206933-venus-and-the-moon/

[Killie]

I really need to try and get up when the wife heads to work at 5am one Saturday and try and get a view myself this month

[alan potts]

I managed to see it about 5 mornings ago low down, before the deep freeze kicked in, I too took the binos to it, lovely crescent as you say.

Alan

[craigdsmith]

Managed to view it for the first time this morning really bright in the morning sky. Stunning crescent. Also managed to see saturn for the first time but unable to view mars due to garden trees. Between 6am and 7 am spotted 4 satellites which gave me the wow factor. Overall a really enjoyable morning a little cold though.

[Special K]

Originally I had the scope and all the trimmings to hand in order to get to work on Markarian's Chain. However, clouds, glare from streetlights, and a few other fumbles made that effort very frustrating! I kept looking past the house to the east and noticed it was a possibility in that direction so I took the bins to my easterly observing spot. Cloud had covered most of the sky except for a narrow shaft that held Venus, and stayed clear there till dawn.

What a magnificent sight! Even at 10x the phase was evident and I reckoned about 40% perhaps? When you see these phases you taste a little bit of that excitement that Galileo felt.

Thank goodness it saved the session!