Back on 26 February 2012, I used the Moon to find the planet Venus in daylight and posted a pic and description. During the last couple of weeks Venus has been about as bright as it ever gets and with some encouragement from my good friend Ross Workman I had a go at locating it in the middle of the day with no Moon as a guide. In the late afternoon on 17 December I had stumbled across it while watching a flock of birds and it was easy enough to see while I was looking right at it. But if I looked off more than a degree or two it disappeared from sight completely. You do have to be looking in just the right spot.
The next day was mostly sunny with just a few high hazy clouds, so I went out about 1:30 pm and stood in the shadow of the building where I work in Jackson, TN, and faced south. I scanned around the approximate area and found Venus pretty easily within a minute or so. I memorized the location and went to get my binoculars from the car. Through the 7×35’s, I could just barely make out its current crescent shape.
On 24 December I went out in my backyard around 3:00 pm and spotted Venus again just above the treeline. Took the following pics. The first with 8x optical zoom. You can just make out a crescent shape.
I added a little more telephoto here (probably around 16x). You can see the crescent shape pretty easily. Both pics were taken with my Canon PowerShot ELPH115IS.
