Hey everyone...
After seeing a great daylight image of Venus here a couple of weeks ago, I decided to try to find Venus during daylight using the setting circles on my non-GoTo mount. I figured if I pointed the scope to the Sun and set the circles to the Sun's current R.A. and Declination, I could then set the circles to Venus's coordinates, and there it would be. I got the positions for the two bodies from
http://www.tecepe.com.br/nav/almanac.html-ssi
So I went out and tried it, and failed utterly! I tried again the next day, to no avail. On the almanac website, you enter the time, and your latitude and longitude. The date defaults to the current day. You choose a heavenly body, hit the button and the coordinates are displayed. I couldn't figure out why I failed to see Venus. On the third attempt, I realized that the "/07" displayed in the date was in fact 1907! And guess what? Venus was in a different place in August of 1907 than in 2007! When I entered the date myself as a 4 digit "2007" I got the correct coordinates, and went out and immediately found Venus. 8)
I got a photo, and posted it in the Nikon forum.
I wonder how many ships whose navigators used this site are currently lost at sea?
So, can someone give me a better free online almanac?
Always learning!
Steve
After seeing a great daylight image of Venus here a couple of weeks ago, I decided to try to find Venus during daylight using the setting circles on my non-GoTo mount. I figured if I pointed the scope to the Sun and set the circles to the Sun's current R.A. and Declination, I could then set the circles to Venus's coordinates, and there it would be. I got the positions for the two bodies from
http://www.tecepe.com.br/nav/almanac.html-ssi
So I went out and tried it, and failed utterly! I tried again the next day, to no avail. On the almanac website, you enter the time, and your latitude and longitude. The date defaults to the current day. You choose a heavenly body, hit the button and the coordinates are displayed. I couldn't figure out why I failed to see Venus. On the third attempt, I realized that the "/07" displayed in the date was in fact 1907! And guess what? Venus was in a different place in August of 1907 than in 2007! When I entered the date myself as a 4 digit "2007" I got the correct coordinates, and went out and immediately found Venus. 8)
I got a photo, and posted it in the Nikon forum.
I wonder how many ships whose navigators used this site are currently lost at sea?
So, can someone give me a better free online almanac?
Always learning!
Steve
