Venus has recently emerged as the morning star again. It's at a high angle too making it easy to observe unlike its evening star descent. During those brief periods when Venus comes between us and the Sun, it becomes a thin crescent. The only other planet to do so is Mercury but that world is difficult to impossible to observe safely in the glare of the rising or setting sun. While not a particularly big deal, it is still neat to observe.
To observe a crescent-shaped Venus requires at minimum a pair of decent binoculars, a telephoto lens, or a telescope. The last being best but my telescope is currently in storage at my mother's due to lack of space here in my apartment. I admit I'm regretting this now. I do have a pair of binoculars so I can see the planet's phase, but the optics aren't that good so there's noticeable distortion on pinpoint sources like stars and planets. I also lack a tripod for them so it's hard to keep still to look at such things. [your heartbeat really becomes apparent at high magnifications!]. I'm forced to rig a minimally acceptable tripod by gently closing my binoculars in the window. The problem with this method is that it severely limits the viewing angles I can achieve. What I'm looking for has to be nearly horizontal or at about 45°. Combine this with a now narrow field of view brought about by magnification, the timing with which I attempt to take photographs with this method is severely limited.
On a larf, I checked to see if I could focus my camera on my binoculars and still get a clear picture. It works...sorta. The pictures I took of a nearby tree look fuzzy despite being clear to my eyes. However, I'm still eager to see if I can capture Venus in a crescent phase but my time is running out. The synodic period of that world is over 500 days. The crescent phase lasts all of a month for the evening and morning apparitions combined so time is of the essence. I'm finally home before sunrise for the first time in a week and of course it's cloudy. A week of absolute clarity when I arrive home too late to make a safe observation and today, a sky full of gray. I'm confident I'll have success photographing the moon this way, but I really want one of Venus before it moves into the more common gibbous phases which would be difficult to distinguish in the kinds of pictures my camera is capable of taking. With luck I will have success tomorrow but it's already getting close to too late for this attempt. My next one won't be until late 2012 or early 2013. Sigh...
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