Day time stars

[MoonStarer]

I know Venus can be seen in daylight if you know where to look, but can any stars or other planets be seen in broad daylight with the aid of a telescope?

[Peter Drew]

Jupiter, Saturn, Mars at opposition and most first magnitude stars should be visible in daylight with a 6". GOTO will be useful to locate them.  ?

[coatesg]

Yes - Jupiter is fairly easy (and can be seen with naked eye), as are the other brighter planets. If you have setting circles/goto, then a lot of the brighter stars (including the sun of course!) are well within range of a half decent telescope. Important that you avoid inadvertently pointing at the sun - one issue is focusing as the eye tends to drift in focus in a plain blue sky. Good transparency will also help enormously.

[Cosmic Geoff]

2 hours ago, coatesg said:

Yes - Jupiter is fairly easy (and can be seen with naked eye), as are the other brighter planets. If you have setting circles/goto, then a lot of the brighter stars (including the sun of course!) are well within range of a half decent telescope.

I find that Jupiter is not visible in daylight with the naked eye, and is barely visible in daylight with a 127mm GoTo showing me exactly where to look.  Venus - easy. Mercury - depends on sky conditions etc.  Saturn - fail. Mars - don't recall ever finding it in daylight.  Some bright first-magnitude stars can be found with a GoTo, but I doubt that the small setting circles fitted to modern amateur mounts will be accurate enough.

The trick is to align on the Sun - the usual heath and safety warnings apply, and don't use kit with plastic eyepiece parts.

[Peter Drew]

Depends a lot on what is considered daylight i.e. Sun above horizon or just set. In a very light but not sunny sky we can make out Jupiters moons with a 16". They are around mag 5.5, the sky is full of 5.5 mag stars but try finding one without Jupiter as a guide!   ?

[vlaiv]

I once heard a story, don't know if its true or not, that one can see stars in the sky during the day by naked eye by going inside very deep well (like 20-30m) and looking up thru the opening

Of course, I don't recommend anyone try this - unless you have a very safe way to get down and get back up again

 

[Peter Drew]

I think that's been debunked. Apparently the sky looks brighter by contast, you can verify this by looking through a long tube pointed at a white wall, the view through the tube will be significantly brighter.   ?

[lukebl]

2 hours ago, vlaiv said:

I once heard a story, don't know if its true or not, that one can see stars in the sky during the day by naked eye by going inside very deep well (like 20-30m) and looking up thru the opening

I remember hearing that story when I was a kid.

But now that I'm much older and wiser, it occurs to me that the field of view from the bottom of a well would be ridiculously small, and the chances of there being a bright star precisely at the zenith at that moment (as it would have to be to be visible from a vertical shaft) would be very remote. Just an urban myth. Like the one about Bob Holness doing the Sax solo on 'Baker Street', or that swans will break your arm with flap of their wings!

[MoonStarer]

Thanks all,

I think it might be fun to try to see what I can see, I've got a decent 10" scope but I've never tried daylight observations.