Tiny Venus

[Scooot]

Early yesterday evening, whilst the sky was still bluish, Venus was shining brightly as usual, so I decided to take a look at it through the baby tak. I knew it would be tiny and not much to see but didn't have time to setup & cool anything bigger. Not that I'd probably see much more anyway.

Using my most powerful eyepiece, a 9mm delite it was indeed tiny at mag 38. When the little Frac snapped into focus, what looked like a half moon phase was clearly showing. I've since discovered it was 58% illuminated. It was very stable and very sharp, but seriously bright. So much so that the planet occasionally looked as if it was sitting within a small airey disc, but also emitting flares of light that resembled dob like defraction spikes.  I don't know how usual it is to see such an affect with a Frac, but this halo and flaring made it more interesting than I expected so I thought I'd post it. I'm glad I made the effort to take a peek.

Here's my child like impressionist effort to portray it, which I sketched this morning from memory. 

Sent from my iPad

[Dave Lloyd]

It is indeed bright, you can imagine what it looks like through an achro.

[Scooot]

2 minutes ago, Dave Lloyd said:

It is indeed bright, you can imagine what it looks like through an achro.

Colours as well? That'd be good