Saturday afternoon at the Great Lawn

Session name: 20090221.1300

Pedestrians approach with curiosity and take in views of crescent Venus through the scope and binoculars. Tom describes why Venus is in crescent phase.

Many are astounded that Venus can be observed with the unaided eye in the day. Where do we look?

Conveniently a plane flies nearby. Serving as a "landmark", we can use this to guide people where to look. In its absence, we described Venus locations in terms of light and dark gradients in the clouds. Can you see the plane flying towards Venus in this wide field (click the image above for larger version)?

Same image as above but cropped Here's another image shortly after the plane passed Venus. Look above the contrail at an 8:45 ~ 9 o'clock direction (to the left) of the plane.

Venusspotting

Venus spotted above building across the street from New York Public Library on 42nd and 5 Ave.

Venus through tree branches looking Manhattan-southeast from Bryant Park.

Venus in broad daylight

Session name: 20090131.1345



Location: Top of the Lawn, Central Park
Site Classification: Urban
Dark Sky Scale, Bortle: Class 8, City Sky
Seeing Scale, Antoniadi: II/III
Transparency: Good
NELM: mag -4.5

Weather: Clear sky, cold day; light breeze (Beaufort 2) sometimes increasing to gentle breeze.
Moon: 5d11h waxing crescent, sunrise terminator.
Equipment: Tak FS-102, 4" refractor; Tom C., tripod-mounted Fujinon 16x70 binoculars
Observing Party: Peter and Tom C.
Passersby: 70 ~80
Objects observed: Venus, Moon, & Sun


"What are you guys looking?"
"Is there something special today?"
"Is that a camera?"

These were the most frequent questions that passersby asked when Tom C. and I set up our gear at the Top of the Lawn. When we replied that one could observe the planet Venus with the unaided eye (naked eye) and also look through our optics, many accepted the offer. Our daytime astronomy session catered to a regular stream of passersby arriving in clusters of people at a time. We invited them to the eyepiece and offered to help them find the planet with the naked eye.

Unaided eye
The crescent Moon was well above the treeline to our east in a cloudless, bluish sky. The Moon could easily been ignored if one weren't looking for her. In the daytime, a crescent moon has low contrast with the background sky, but a prompt as to where to look, one can find it without difficulty.

Looking directly south from the crescent Moon, Venus sparkled as a lonesome diamond chip. On the sky, in celestial terms, Venus was about 17° west southwest of the Moon. It was far easier describe to the public to imagine that the Moon at the center of a clock and that Venus was at a 3 o'clock position. The real difficulty was describing how far to look away from the Moon. Clouds, planes, balloons, or birds in the sky are convenient "landmarks" to direct one's attention but none were available.

Instead we used our hands to find Venus. A hand span, with pinky and thumb extended, held at arms length is about 20°. So basically recited these instructions:

• Place the thumbnail beneath the Moon
• Imagine the Moon is at the center of clock
• Place pinky tip at the 3 o'clock position (level line)
• Look above the pinky nail, this is the are of sky where to look and you can drop your hand
• Relax your focus as if you are looking through and beyond the sky
• When you see a small glitter, look for a star on the background sky.
• Eureka!

As the day progressed, the line that Venus made with the Moon advanced to 4- and 5 o'clock orientations. I was surprised by how many spotted Venus successfully. More gratifying was when once someone spotted Venus and were eager to show others who were having trouble. Success and astonishment were breeding.

I passed around the solar paddles for those interested in looking safely at the Sun. Through the Baader solar film, one could see the entire disk of a Sun sans sunspots.

Telescope and Binoculars

Tom C. had the binoculars exclusively on Venus. At 16x power and observing the sunlight reflected off the cloud tops on Venus 50 million miles away, most people could make out the crescent shape of Venus.

In the telescope with a magnification of 63x, we swapped views of the Moon and Venus.

First time telescope observers were confused by what they saw in the eyepiece. They looked into the eyepiece and said they could not see Venus, all they could see was the crescent Moon. We - Tom, myself, an even observers who just left the eyepiece - told them that they were looking at Venus and no the Moon. After everyone in the crowd saw Venus, the scope was turned on the Moon for comparison and appreciation.

Everyone marveled at the size of the moon and the details of craters and mare. At this age of the moon, 5 1/2 days, Mare Necatris and the Altai Scarp were well favored to observe under the dramatic sunrise light on the Moon. This part of the Moon caught most persons attention, especially crater Theophilus with its central peak.

For those that asked if we were birding, we were not disappointed. With Tom's help we saw and identified:
- a red-tailed hawk flew nearby gliding on whirlpools of air,
- flocks of geese migrated between Turtle Pond and the Reservoir,
- a Peregrine Falcon swooped in a circle nearby then perched on a tree to our east
- and Cooper's Hawk flew across the Great Lawn.

Crescent Venus

Session name: 20070811.1030

Crescent Venus snapped in the morning sky with a Nikon Coolpix 995 coupled to a Tele Vue Ranger (TVR) and Tele Vue plossl 20 mm eyepiece.

A short session from Drip Rock where I started with the Sun using the Takahashi 22x60 bins. Detected one small sunspot in the upper leading quadrant of the solar disk after some effort. Otherwise, would have thought that the disk was blank of any activity.

Spent some time hunting for the waning crescent Moon with no luck. I thought there was a chance with 16° elongation and 2.0% illuminated disk. Charlie and I exchanged emails earlier in the week about catching the rising last crescent but slept in not checking the weather for this morning. It may have been a cooperative sky. When I awoke the skies looked really clear and I could see very far across NJ to the horizon. Yesterday's rain washed the haze from our skies. I'll check his blog to see if he reported anything.

Abandoning any further effort on the moon I moved onto Venus. Simply aligned the bins on the Sun and then used the scaled markings on the geared Bogen 410 tripod head to measure off to Venus. Voila. First shot and there was a striking upside down, crescent Venus about 12° below the Sun. Continued to observe in the Tak bins, hand held 7x50 bins, and then the TVR with 32mm plossl eyepiece. Lastly swapped the 32mm for the Nikon setup and snapped some photos.