what is wrong with venus?

Question

I was looking at Venus from Vancouver, British Columbia with my sky watcher 130mm 650 focal Newtonian and am a beginner in astronomy.

But venus was pretty bright and just showed up as a bright spot in my scope. A bright speck of light, I could not really make out any surface details or for that matter anything at all. The damn planet looked like a star with a light of its own :(

I am assuming this is because of its closeness to sun, while the sun sets across the horizon.

Can one see a good view of venus through the above scope. I mean saturn was quite interesting to see but venus on the other hand did not really amuse me too much at first sight. I am wondering it is because of the good ol sun or simply the nature of things.

Thanks

Answer 1

If you can distinguish the disk of Venus, it can look more interesting at times because Venus goes through the same phases that the Moon does. So watch for a full Venus and a cresent Venus.

Answer 2

Yes, Venus isn't too spectacular to look at through a small 'scope. It's usually much too bright, plus the planet is completely covered in permanent clouds so there's no hope of seeing any surface detail. With your 130mm 'scope you'll find Mars to be more interesting. Under the right seeing conditions you can make out the polar caps. Jupiter of course has the "Great Red Spot" to see.

Answer 3

Venus doesn't have any real surface detail to speak of. It's cloud layers have some slightly varying colors but it's tough to see in a scope because it's so bright. It's nearness to the sun and to us is the culprit.

Venus is best viewed during the day or early evening twilight which reduces the contrast somewhat, making it easier to view. The only real interesting thing to observe with Venus is to keep note of the changes of it's phases over the course of it's synodic year. After it reaches greatest eastern elongation in a couple months, it will rapidly move closer to the sun and it's phase will rapidly wane towards a crescent. This should be nice to see.

Answer 4

Venus is well and doing fine. Unfortunately, Venus has a very dense atmosphere which, other than being bright (since it is also close to us), doesn't show any details. Venus rotates very slowly, so its atmosphere doesn't seem to form bands or massive storm systems that are characteristic of Saturn and Jupiter. Moroever, Venus is basically earth-like underneath its atmosphre, while the larger planets are basically dense gas bodies which get denser with decreasing distance from the center and perhaps with a small rocky core. Venus doesn't have any moons or rings either.

Answer 5

The cloud cover of Venus is so dense, you are not going to see the surface, so all you are going to get is a featureless disk. The probes NASA sent used radar to map the surface.

As Venus reaches toward its greatest elongation from the Sun in June, you will start seeing some variation. Venus will crescent, just like the Moon, passing from the far side to the near side of the Sun.

Answer 6

You should have been able to make out the phase of Venus (gibbous at the moment) but that's about it. The phase is reducing, so you'll see changes if you keep looking. Although it's a boring planet to observe, you might get (very) lucky and see the "ashen light".

Answer 7

Venus has too much atmosphere because it doesn't have a moon to strip some away.

It also has a runaway greenhouse effect that traps heat, so it's about 800 degrees F at the surface.

Your telescope is reflecting off the clouds on Venus. They're there all the time.

Answer 8

Try using higher magnification which will cut down on the brightness or try using a moon filter. Even then you are just going to see a ball of light because of its dense cloud cover.

Answer 9

I fear you will be always disappointed if you expect to see much detail when viewing Venus from Earth. Her atmosphere is opaque and shows only swirls of what are believed to be SO2 clouds.

The links below lead to many pictures of the planet.