Kon

Thanks. I am really pleased with this result and I have a few more captures that I want to process and possibly combine in winjupos. The seeing was so good that I could focus on the clouds. I feel I could push it more but it started getting rather artificial.

I managed my best Venus session this year. A balmy 18 degrees, blue skies and perfect seeing. I captured at 630pm when the sun was still high up. The UV is showing loads of details and it was th easiest to process, mostly registax and a tiny bit of denoise and sharpening in Astrosurface. IR also showed some details as well as the colour capture. The false colour and UV captures are my best so far. 8" Dob, manual, asi462mm, 2.5x TV powermate, UV and IR astromania. Resized 150%.

Looks good. The two UV captures have some nice clouds there and I think the last one has more contrast (I had a quick look online and it seems to have some IR leak?). Your IR images also have some details. I have the Astromania UV filter and it is great for a cheap one.

Excellent images and lovely details throughout. In my eyes, even the more sharpened image, still looks great without noise or artifacts.

Godo effort Reggie. I think it is a bit overexposed during capture (you can see the white edge is washed out) and probably a bit oversharpened. I use the Astromania UV filter and it is working really well considering the cheap price.

I was in Iceland recently and I saw the aurora one night from the edge of a city and they appeared washed out green but occasionally greenish when there was a strong display. A few nights later I was on a remote part bortle 2 and the greens and reds were vivid.

Nice looking clouds. I have not tried to combine videos for Venus but I should give it a try.

The UV image is displaying really nice clouds. I like the processing too. The IR seems to have some details but a bit too bright to see them clearly.

I feel if conditions are good IR can pull some nice details in the same way colour images do. But of course UV will have the best results.

Believe me it can get frustrating quite easily but it's my relaxing time out under the skies.

Fantastic report and the views through the 15" and 30" must be amazing.

Excellent image. Nice processing with really nice details. Did you manage a UV capture?

Thanks Stuart. I would love to have some proper conditions during capture. One day ... Regarding focusing, I assume you mean the UV, I have the gain high until I can see a bright planet, then try to bring in focus. It takes a few attempts. I then drop the gain until I see the planet edge (still bright but not overexposed); if I get a soft edge, I try to have a tight planet plus see the uv clouds as they are visible. I don't think I have 100% nailed it yet. I do all that at 640x480 ROI. It is fiddly as I only get a few secs to adjust my focusing, that's also manual.

This is a capture from the weekend that I did not have time to process. Seeing was not great despite I captured during daylight. Clouds in UV are not bad considering the conditions and IR was featureless but useful for the false colour image. 8" Dob, manual, asi462mm, 2.5x TV powermate, UV and IR pass filters.

@Space Cowboyand @neil phillips next astro purchase?

That looks really nice and the clouds have popped more.

Nice images. Hard to believe they are from UK. I was all clouded last night.

Very nice image. The clouds have come up nicely.

Good effort with it. I think the IR pass is oversharpened in my opinion, you seem to have an additional artifact outside the planet so hard to tell these are real features. The repeated patchy pattern inside is also an indication of oversharpened image. Try go a few steps back and see how it looks. The #47/IR cut is much better. By the way, I use an Astromania UV filter not a stack. Try to focus on the planet than using the mask as seeing constantly changes. I refocus several times before I am happy to start capturing.

Another excellent sketch. It's amazing you can still see details when Mars is so small.

I need to get my head around it as 850 or less has higher energy compared to longer wavelength, 1000nm. Therefore, the shorter wavelength should give us better signal to noise compared to longer wavelengths . But why the contrast is better is a bit unclear.

No worries at all! It sucks about the tree and i noticed that my captures at lower elevations are awful. My best captures this season are at broad daylight. A bit harder to find Venus but I roughly know where it is now. Going back to filters, the 850 might not be too bad for an 8" Dob. I am not sure if you have seen this post a few months ago? Or would your advise be to go for a 742? You know I value and listen to your advise and so far it has paid dividends, including getting a mono camera 😄. https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/406904-venus-irguv-feb-14th/

Awesome!

@neil phillipsand @Space Cowboy I understand that the tighter cut off will give other features cleaner but why not use the fuller spectrum of IR? We get more signal and in theory other features. My understanding is that the tighter ones reveal more specific features , which are still present in the broader wavelengths but just make them pop?

Looking at the QE responses the 462 MC is the better of the three, 90% and mm 80% than the 178mono, 50%. Do you fancy testing the 850 with my 462mc? I am not currently using it much until the planets are higher up. I can post it over.