venus is annoying!

[SirFoo]

I've been doing this for a few months now and I'm. Loving it. The moon is great and Saturn is amazing. However Venus has never been interesting at all. It always appears to be 'bubbling' . O can barely make out a sphere never mind a phase. Why can I not see anything? Very frustrating!

[pvaz]

yeah, that's about it. I can see the phase but you need a good collimation, good seeing and high mag. I use 240x.

When the seeing isn't perfect it bubbles and I can see some color casts which I believe are caused by the atmosphere as it becomes orange as the sun at sunset.

[BazMark]

My problem is glare with Venus. It's so bright.

I find a variable polarising filter helps. Also viewing it as early as possible before the sky is dark.

[John]

.... Also viewing it as early as possible before the sky is dark.

That is the approach that I like best - twilight viewing works suprisingly well on Saturn and Jupiter as well

[Keiran]

Check this out .....

Here

[LukeSkywatcher]

I've only ever seen Venus as a fuzzy (because of its brightness) bean.

[brianb]

Venus is also quite small at the moment.

At the eyepiece, Venus is by far the most boring of the planets visible to the naked eye. Its bright cloud cover has very subtle shading, only visible with superb instruments and to skilled observers. There is more contrast in the violet, #47 deep violet filter helps but the transmission is so low that you need 8"+ aperture to use it effectively.

The way to get the best views of Venus is to observe in full daylight, when it is at is highest and the glare problem is least. Solar heating means that the seeing is likely to be wobbly, and you do of course need to take great care to avoid getting an eyeful of solar radiation through the scope! An equatorial mount with manual setting circles, or a goto mount using "solar system" alignment on the Moon (or the Sun WITH SAFE FILTERS!!!) makes finding Venus in daylight simple.

[Ant]

I took a sequence of images of Venus during it's last evening apparition.

These images are to scale, I would guess (having not looked at Venus this time round yet) that you're at the far left at the moment.

As venue moves away from the sun it'll get slowly bigger and thinner.

HTH

Ant

[Demonperformer]

You may get better views at the end of the year, when it will be in the morning sky. By that time, the earth has already cooled and so there are fewer air currents - it will also be higher in the sky.

[Chris_J]

My scope is currently well collimated, but whenever I view Venus, I always get a 'prism' effect as it bubbles around in the atmosphere.

I can only assume that with it being so low in the sky, the atmosphere is behaving like a prism and splitting the light into a rainbow of colours.

Do anyone else see this?

[brianb]

it'll get slowly bigger and thinner.

Yes. The biggest area (therefore most chance of seeing any detail) is when the phase is between 0.3 & 0.4, a couple of weeks after maximum evening elongation ... unfortunately Venus will be well south of the Sun then & not as conspicuous as it is now. The morning elongation (late November / December) is much more favourable.

[yeti monster]

Today I checked stellarium at 13:00, and it showed Venus directly overhead. I'll try tomorrow to see if I can find it in broad day light (being very careful to position the scope in a shadowed area), then, hopefully, I'll get a chance to see Venus without the glare and turbulence.

[DarkerSky]

Fantastic images Ant.

As others have said, Venus is best in early twilight, or if you can find it in broad daylight. You'll have less atmospheric turbulence and also have less glare so you have a better chance of making out the phase

[SirFoo]

Thanks for all your information. I did view at sunset but it didn' t make much differnce. Looking at some of the amazing photos from BrianB make me very jealous indeed!

[LukeSkywatcher]

Stunning images Ant. Fantastic collection.

When you say "to scale", does that mean you used the same magnification etc for each image?

I'm confused as to how the size goes from small (on the left) to BIG (on the right).