Over the past few weeks, I wondered where Venus had gone. I had not seen the planet for nearly a year, since it disappeared from the evening sky near the New Year, 2006. So, I decided to look for it: in the daytime. I had already known that Venus can be seen very well in the middle of the day, but I also knew that Venus would be near the furthest distance it could get from the Earth, which would make Venus seem dimmer than its normal brilliant -4 magnitude.

    If I could detect Venus, I knew that it must look very dull. A small, seemingly insignificant ball of light as Venus usually looks when it has just emerged from superior conjunction. The best time to spot Venus is when it is a HUGE shimmering crescent, when the planet is virtually at our doorstep. Here is what the Earth, Sun and Venus looked like in relation to each other on December 30, 2006:

    As can be seen, Venus has just emerged from behind the Sun, as far as Earth's perspective is concerned. Venus might look like it is easy to spot, but if you look at the perceived angle between the Sun and Venus, it is a mere 15.5 degrees, which can make Venus difficult to spot in the early evening sky, and virtually impossible to see with the naked eye in the daylight hours. Couple that with the fact that the Sun's light is being scattered by the Earth's atmosphere, much more so in the vicinity of the Sun, and you get a difficult time to find Venus!

    I had spotted Venus as little as 5 degrees away from the Sun, and when it had a 0.1 percent crescent phase. Of course most of us saw Venus when it was 0 degrees from the Sun (during the Venus Transit in the summer of 2004), but that was just cheating! In any event, I knew that I could see Venus, but clouds were rolling in, cirrus clouds to be exact. You know, those pesky harbingers of rain or snow storms that tend to get in the way and say, "I know you can see through me, but just try to see something that is challenging!". Venus would have been challenging, and here was some cloud trying to spoil it!

    When spotting a planet in the middle of the day (1 p.m. in the case of Venus), the Sun is your best friend. Whether you have a manual or goto scope, the Sun is the great equalizer during daytime astronomy. The Sun indeed blots out most of the calibration objects in the sky, all except the Sun and the Moon, but you don't always have the Moon to rely upon. Polaris is also invisible during the day, so finding true north can be a problem, unless you have a magic device called a compass. Polar alignment (if you do not have a permanently mounted telescope) can be tricky during the daytime, but a compass (which finds magnetic North not geographic North by the way) will find North for you. It isn't perfect, but it might be all you have!

    So, here's what the sky looked like when I made my first attempt to find Venus:

    Messy! The big white blob is the Sun and surrounding illuminated cloud. The big red cross is approximately where Venus was predicted to be, approximately 15.5 degrees from the center of the "huge white blob". As you can see, there was some hope, being a large blue patch of sky in the vicinity.

    I used my 8-inch Celestron 8i telescope to try and find that speck of light called Venus. I first polar aligned the scope by using my compass and remembering that geographic North is approximately 13 degrees East of magnetic North. I did not do the most perfect job, but I knew I was in the ballpark of Polaris (no, I did not try to see Polaris in the daytime!). I then calibrated the scope on the only celestial object I could see at the time: the Sun. I told the little goto scope that it would be calibrated on the Sun. After clearing all the warning it gave me about looking at the Sun through a telescope (by the way, DON'T DO THIS), I slewed the telescope toward that big yellow ball that sustains us so well. I looked at the shadow of the scope on the ground, and was able to see the light from the Sun projected from the telescope. I had found the Sun. Whoopee. I then told the scope that it was indeed pointed at the Sun. I then pressed "planet" and scrolled through the menu to "Venus", pressed "goto" and off she went, hopefully toward Venus. It did stop in the vicinity of the planet Venus by the way.

    So, I looked in the eyepiece in the hopes that not only did I polar align the scope precisely, but I aligned the scope onto the Sun with 100% accuracy. Well, you could probably guess what happened next. Nothing but blue (and grey) sky, of course! So, what to do next? The great thing about looking for Venus in broad daylight is that not only can you see it through the main telescope, but you can also see it as a speck of light through the finder scope as well! Fantastic! This meant that if you did not get Venus bang on on your first try (very rare in the daytime by the way), you can look through your (hopefully) aligned finder scope and possibly spot it through that! This is just what I did, and I was able to spot it through the finder scope (which incidentally once belonged to my old Criterion that I retired several months back. You might also recognize the dark blue equatorial wedge in the above image as being from the old Criterion as well!).

    Once I got the speck of light into the finder scope's crosshairs, it was duck soup to finally see Venus, looking like a small white dot in a field of blue and grey, through the eyepiece. I was able to show a few of my neighbors the sight as they came out to wonder just what I was doing with an 8-inch telescope in the middle of the day! All you need to image Venus in the daytime is a regular digital camera (a CCD would easily saturate in the daytime light). The image below was taken with my Nikon CoolPix 4500 (it still works!) and my Celestron 8i with a 32mm Plossl eyepiece:

    You can easily see the direction the Sun is in. Just follow the light gradient from left to right! As you can see, Venus is simply a round ball (nearly full phase), which is not really interesting, but can be a challenge to daytime astronomers!

    So, I thought, could I see Venus just 15.5 degrees from the Sun with my naked eye just after sunset? The next evening, I decided to take a little walk with my digital camera and find out. If I could not see it with my naked eye, I would simply take a bunch of images and later process them, stretch them, etc. to see if I can see a small white speck in the twilight glow. It turns out I did not need to "guess" with my camera, because I saw a small white speck nearly drowned out by the twilight glow in the southwest. It is basically the home page image that has been reproduced below. Venus did not look anything like the dazzling white beacon it usually seems to be in the twilight sky, but give it time! Soon, it will become a brilliant shining star in the western twilight sky that I have always known and loved since childhood.

    Yes! Venus is back! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Modified: February 11, 2007