NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David C
Date: 2020 Apr 8, 00:05 -0700
Frank wrote
Our eyes have great difficulty sitting still on a white dot on a light blue background. But once you've seen it and "walked it" to a convenient foreground object, like a tree limb, that you can return to easily, it's truly amazing how easy it is to find it again. Venus is bright and easy in daylight --as soon as you've found it once.
Agreed!!!!!!
Earlier today the sky was covered in cloud and I gave up, not just for the day, but until December when venus will be at its maximum southerly declination. In the late afternoon I went outside and the sky, from NE to NW was clear. I hurridly went back inside to get the tablet and binoculars. Venus was at an altitude of 16 ° with an azimuth of 326°. I used my real compass (i.e. not phone) to pick a tree on the skyline. Then I scanned and scanned and scanned.........with the binoculars but could not see venus. Anyway, to cut a long story short I eventually found the planet. With practice I was able to put the binoculars down, then pick them up and go straight to venus.
Then I repeated the process with the naked eye. One trick I used was to centre venus in the binoculars, then move them away while keeping my head still. This gave me the altitude.
After what seemed an eternity I saw a very brief spot in the sky that quickly disappeared. I was confident that it was venus. With practice I could keep venus in view for longer and longer periods. Again, cutting a long story short,at 0540 UT I could read the screen on the tablet and then IMMEDIATELY locate venus. My reference was some trees on the skyline. An app on my phone says that sunset was at 0600 UT so I definitely saw venus in daylight.
My wife called out that diinner was ready. I put the binoculars away in the garage and then closed and locked the door. I walked over to where I had been standing and quickly confirmed that venus was where I had left it (-;
It has taken me at least five days of effort to achieve success.