Question about Venus

Observing Venus tonight at sundown, I saw dark shading along the terminator. Looks to me like lunar maria as observed with the naked eye. Equipment used was SV102ABV with 5mm AP SPL and 3.6mm Tak LE.

So my question is - what am I seeing?

-Evan

I to saw the same sort of feature that you described when I was viewing on the 13th. I didn't see it on the terminator, but more towards the southern limb. I used a TV Pronto at 69x with a 7mm Nagler and TV 3x barlow. Seeing wasn't the greatest but there were breif moments of clarity. There was a lot of purple fringing around Venus from the scope but the planet was sharp and I noticed the darker lunar maria type feature. I read somewhere that features in Venus's atmosphere could not be detected by amature scopes.