NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Fred Hebard
Date: 2020 Apr 26, 07:21 -0400
On Apr 26, 2020, at 02:15, Frank Reed <NoReply_FrankReed@navlist.net> wrote:I saw Venus in daylight twice today, once around azimuth 135° and later around azimuth 235°. Both of these sightings were pure "naked eye" without using binoculars to speed things up. Venus was a bright white dot, and I could see it easily without magnification whenever it was within about 4° of the central focus of my vision, which sounds about right for the fovea of the retina. When it was more than 4° off-axis, Venus was quite invisible.
When Venus was in the southeast, the first time I saw it, its altitude was about 72°. I've mentioned before that it's quite difficult to estimate high altitudes like this. You'll almost always find that you're looking too low. But today was our first sunny, pleasant day in a week (and probably the last for another week), so I tried a different track. I dropped down on the grass and started from the zenith. And there it was... Bright and obvious even with some wispy mid-altitude clouds about.
Later in the day, I spotted it easily again, and I also pointed it out to my neighbor who saw it clearly, after I walked it to a tree branch and told her to stand right where I had been standing. After we clarified which little twig I was talking about, she saw it, no problem.
Frank Reed
