2007-03-25

No spots or other marks visible on the Sun.

I quickly got Venus lined up in the 905 with the 6mm eyepiece. Immediately I could see lots of false colour in the image. It was, however, obvious right away that I was looking at a gibbous disk.

To combat the false colour I added the contrast booster and this made quite a bit of difference. The image was quite unsteady, and I could still see a fair bit of red fringing, but the image was sharper than without the filter and the impression that I was looking at something that had a phase was increased.

Next I added the 2x barlow. The image wasn't too bad. There was an increased "rainbow" effect around the planet and the edges were noticeably softer but the overall shape was the same as without the barlow.

I noted at this point that there was no way I'd ever be able to use the 905 to look for the sort of terminator detail that avid Venus observers look for. Likewise I'd never be able to go looking for evidence of the ashen light. However, all that said, with the setup at hand it was obvious that I was looking at Venus (and, as far as I can remember, this was the first time I'd ever looked at Venus with a telescope).

I also noted that I should try observing Venus with the 130M at some point. I would have used it this evening but if I'd brought it out and given it enough time to cool down I'd have lost Venus as seen from the garden.

I removed the barlow and carried on observing with just the 6mm eyepiece. I could still see a fair bit of red fringe, this came and went over time. As an experiment I added #80A medium blue filter to the box (keeping the contrast booster in place) and this seemed to make quite a bit of difference. The view now appeared very crisp with little to no evidence of fringing. This was the best view I had all this session and the phase of the planet stood out very well.

By around 20:12 UT Venus was starting to get quite low for my position, the mist was starting to get thicker and to top it all off smoke from at least one fire in someone's house was starting to drift over my way so I decided to pack up.