Hello all.
I had an amazing time I had observing the planet Venus with my William Optics 158 mm f/7 apochromatic refractor on Thursday evening 28th June 2018. I observed it for nearly 1 hour using most of my eyepieces.
Venus' magnitude is now reached -4.1. Its angular diameter was 15.5". The distance from Earth was 161,000,000 kms. The globe was nearly 71% illuminated.
The seeing conditions were truly excellent.
At 40X, I could see the bright and white gibbous phase.
It was when I reached 225X I figured out this was going to be a night to remember. There was no shimmering and the Sun had not set at this time
I went up to 280X and 320X -the latter power only had the slightest of disturbances.
Up to last night, I could never go beyond 225X. Then bad seeing would take over.
At no time could I see any bright or darker shapes in Venus' clouds.
However I was extremely happy to see a "big" Venus once again doing the business!
I would have thought with all the intense heat we would have bad turbulence these evenings.
After Venus I observed Izar, Pi Bootis and Xi Bootis all split at 112X.
Clear skies from Aubrey.
  