Observing Venus in the evening later this March

Post topics on how to set up, EP selection, cold/wet weather outings, gear transportation, target selection etc.
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Makuser United States of America
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Observing Venus in the evening later this March

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Post by Makuser »


First, on March 23, the Moon hangs 6° below Venus in a lovely pairing. Try photographing this scene in twilight with interesting foreground objects to create an artistic silhouette against the sky. By March 30, Venus is in conjunction with Uranus. With binoculars, you can find Uranus standing 1.2° due south of Venus. Venus now shows a 78-percent-lit gibbous disk spanning 14". The much more distant Uranus (20.45 AU; 1.9 billion miles) spans 3". The following night, the last evening of March, the two planets are still less than 2° apart. They set before 10:30 P.M. local time, so plan your viewing soon after dark. And a March historical note: Sir William Herschel first observed Uranus from the garden of his house in Bath, Somerset, England on March 13th, 1781 and then reported it, thus leading to it's discovery as being a planet.
Next, here is a great video of the only surface pictures every recorded on Venus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5pXx_AjjlM
I hope this helps with your observing plans, you enjoyed the Venus video, and the best of wishes for clear night skies.
Marshall
Sky-Watcher 90mm f/13.8 Maksutov-Cassegrain on motorized Multimount
Orion Astroview 120ST f/5 Refractor on EQ3 mount
Celestron Comet Catcher 140mm f/3.64 Schmidt-Newtonian on alt-az mount
Celestron Omni XLT150R f/5 Refractor on CG4 mount with dual axis drives.
Orion 180mm f/15 Maksutov-Cassegrain on CG5-GT Goto mount.
Orion XT12i 12" f/4.9 Dobsonian Intelliscope.
Kamakura 7x35 Binoculars and Celestron SkyMaster 15x70 Binoculars. ZWO ASI 120MC camera.
>)))))*>
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