Venus at mid-day, a challenging target!

A good question Seanie,

I would not need to leave the scope running from the previous night, what I do is the following..
Place the solar filter on the scope, turn the scope and computer on, using the NSEW controls set the scope on the center of the sun. Using starrynight, I synchronise the telescopes co-ordinates with that of the Sun, then do a goto to Venus using the handcontroller and remove the solar filter, thats it!.
In the space of a few minutes you have a nice Venus in the scopes field of view. It was very bright through the scope but invisible to the naked eye.

I've also seen Saturn in daytime through the scope, given that, Jupiter should be possible also, as well as some of the brightest stars!

I certainly would not prefer sweeping a daytime sky, you'd need to be extremely carefull not the get anywhere near the sun!!

PS, the sky seems to have cleared up here in the last few hours

Thanks for that Dave. Though, for the lesser goto scopes (like the ETX series), we will probably need to do a 2 star allignment around 3am, and keep it running, to make the planet search carefully work during daylight!

Seanie.

This might work, but obviously you'll need a pretty good 2 star alignment, otherwise drift will mean that Venus will not be in the field of view later on when you go look for it.
You could make things easier by synchronising on the moon later on in the morning, well past 3am.

Good idea, its a favourable late riser for the next few dawn mornings.