I think it is tonight,17th,that Venus returns to our night skies but it'll be low and visible a half hour after sunset.here's the theory as to why the solar wind has not blown away Venus's atmosphere;as the solar wind interacts with the thick atmosphere it creates a pseudo magnetic field caused by the interaction twixt the particles of solar wind and the atmospheric particles. This acts like a proper magnetic field to protect the atmosphere,well that's one theory but it seems to me nobody really knows unless the theory about the solar wind stripping atmospheres is wrong?Mars is much further from the sun and even has a reminant patchy magnetic field yet is losing it's atmosphere or so they think?Titan has a thick atmosphere and no magnetic field but it is far from the sun plus Saturn's magnetic field will protect it as it must spend much of it's time behind Saturn .

 

If it's true about the reactions between the solar wind and the planetary atmosphere then all you'd need would be to thicken up Mars's atmosphere and then a pseudo magnetosphere would be created.of course Mars doesn't have as much gravity to hold onto a atmosphere. Mercury has a magnetosphere but only a tenuous atmosphere thought to be gas stolen from the solar wind.Venus would probably develop a magnetosphere if it could be spun as fast as earth unless of course its core is no longer molten?there's evidence for a molten core due to possible volcanic activity on Venus but no body knows if its volcanoes are still active?

 

One theory about Venus's thick atmosphere and why it hasn't blown away lacking a magnetosphere is it's constantly being replenished by volcanic eruptions.this is guess work in my view as we don't know if Venus has active volcanos. No evidence it does no evidence it doesn't! It's not a nice world to be rains of hydrochloric and sulphuric acids,90 earth air pressure and about 400c,it's amazing the Russian probes lasted as long as they did.I saw Venus tonight just after sunset,about 1730 hrs..looked like a fullish disk but the low altitude and some of earth's clouds on the move limited what I could see.

 

West at the moment. Venus tends to flare due to it's brightness. I've never seen cloud details on it,it just looks white.over the years I've looked at it with various, telescopes,monoculars,binoculars and naked eyes.the phases can been seen at 8x and some report that the naked eye can see them although I'm rather doubtful about that.often we can see what we want to see especially if we know it's there!if you get a hazy day or very thin mist that takes the sting out for Venus and makes seeing the phases easier.when it gets higher I'll try my 5x10 Zeiss mini quick monocular on it and see if 5x is enough to show the phases.

 

Can you pick up Venus's phases and Jupiter's moons in a 4x12?I've seen Uranus in my Zeiss 5x10 monocular and had at least one of Jupiter's moons.I think the light grabbing of the 10mm is very poor and far far inferior to the 8x25.in fact I think my 8x25 has far more in common with my 10x42 than it does with the 5x10.for example I can just pick up m51,m66 and m101 in the 8x25 although I can never be sure of m1,m82,m110,m32,m57 but I'm pretty sure it just pulls them in.the 10x42 is the same except brighter and bigger and I'm 100 percent sure of m82 and m1.

 

I've never been to Vermont in winter but some years back I took a bus from Boston to Montreal (I had a girlfriend in Boston at the time and took a side trip to get Canada under the belt). I saw the green and white mountains, they looked heavily wooded,and just the thing to block out Venus and mercury! If I recall they where in New Hampshire and Vermont but suddenly end at Quebec. Not particular high by world standards but it wouldn't seem that way if you got lost in them!