Venus and Jupiter (vaporized!)

by Mark Wagner


I again found the planets just a few minutes ago [Tue, 23 Feb 1999 11:57:35 (PST)] by shielding my eyes and looking approximately 27 degrees east of the sun along an imagied ecleptic to where they should be located.

In my 35mm eyepiece (10" f/5.6 Dob) they were less than 1/5th the field of view apart, whereas yesterday they were at opposite edges of the field. The change was obvious.

Venus was very bright, Jupiter quite washed out. I bumped up to my 10mm Ortho and still had both planets in view. Then Jupiter disappeared, followed shortly by Venus.

Looking up, I realized they'd been vaporized by clouds. :-(

Still, a very nice sight while it lasted.