NavList:

Yesterday the sky to the east and north was clear. I briefly saw venus through binoculars, then following Franks's advce' lowered the binoculars until I saw a reference point - a tree. I put the binoculars down but could not see the planet with the naked eye. I picked up the binoculars  but despite searching for the rest of the afternoon I did not see venus again. As Frank said (if I quote correctly) the planet had disappeared into a space/time warp.

I think that I have determined the problem. If I scan horizontally from east to north with the naked eye the sky appears blue. However if I do the same thing with binoculars the sky changes from bright blue to white. Clearly there is some high cloud that I cannot detect with the naked eye. Maybe I need to search before venus is on the meridian?

The phone compass is useless. I remembered that decades ago I had a real compass. Better still I remembered where it was and in less than a minute had laid my hands on it.  It is well damped and unlike the phone compass does not wander aimlessly all over the place. I set the variation on it and it pointed to what I knew to be true north.

The second photo shows an earlier attemt to determing azimuth.  It must be day four or five of my attempt to see venus with the naked eye............

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