Venus, what should it look like?

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Got some very wobbly AVIs and Staxed 'em to death. All I got was a blurry looking shape, a bit like an out of focus nearly full moon. Did I do good, or bad, or what?

I've read that it's cloudy there almost as much as it is here, but to look nearly full I'd expect it to be kind of in the opposite direction to the sun, whereas the sun had recently set and Venus was following it down. The raw frames were absolutely horrid as the seeing was Jordan 8 or worse due to looking over houses and the motorway.

Don't know if its an image, or just an artifact caused by stacking loads of carp frames haphazerdly.

Captain Chaos

[Astroman]

Venus is not much of a target, TBH. The best time to see it is when it's in a slender phase, but it'll be close to the Sun and the seeing will probably be bad. I've seen it look very impressive at times, but mostly it's just as you describe. Is "blobish" a word?

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

It is now AM, and a very apt one at that.

Another new word for my list, hurrah!

BTW my favourite word that I made up is Semiglot.

Captain Chaos

[Astroman]

You know, now that I think about it, the "best" observations I've had of Venus were not so much Venus itself, as the circumstances around the observation. A nearly circular apparition just a day before inferior conjunction, the barest of a sliver before it passes between us and the Sun, or a gibbous phase at 1,024x through a 9" folded refractor. Neither of which had good conditions, the image swimming in the heat of the day for one, and massive chromatic aberation in the other. But there it was, Venus! You may call it something similar to looking at, say quazars. Minute little stellar object....that happens to be 4 or 5 Billion light years away. Not much to see, but hey! I see it anyway!

[barkis]

Can be a hairy practice, and great care is required, but daylight shots using filters will give reasonable results. pick a hazy type of day, which can be indicative of quiet atmosphere. Best probabaly at crescent phase. You are never going to get detail from Venus other than what might be happening in it's atmosphere. That would have to be a very large event. Every night /morning snap of the planet I have attempted have been rubbish.

Ron.

[Brass n glass]

Somebody once wrote a brief, full and handy guide to observing Venus: "If you can see any markings on the planet, they aren't there."

[Astroman]

Somebody once wrote a brief, full and handy guide to observing Venus: "If you can see any markings on the planet, they aren't there."

Sad, but true. Though I did think I could see some banding at 1024x.

[Brass n glass]

A planet of illusions and mirages for visual observers. I have an old book with a map of supposed surface markings on Venus that were said to look like the "seas" on the Moon. It adds that in 1841 astronomers in Rome using a 155m refractor "with powers sometimes up to 1128" saw "night after night a valley surrounded by mountains like a lunar crater".

[SteelRat]

Laugh from the past for ya;

One o m'1st pics. S'a wobbly sucker!

[Caz]

Ahh, but that was with a Nokia..

[SteelRat]

Heheheh

[CELESCOPE]

well ok i guess its not much to look at , but i found it exciting getting the different phases of venus , this is what i took back in 2004 with a modded web cam atik

Rog

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Mine looked a bit like the next one to the left on your diagram, the one just off the page, so I think it's probably all I'll get, a not quite round blobish thing.

Captain Chaos

[barkis]

Laugh from the past for ya;

One o m'1st pics. S'a wobbly sucker!

I got a hatful like that SR. I just kept tryin, tryin, and tryin some more.

[SteelRat]

I just kept tryin, tryin, and tryin some more.

Heheh, ain't that the truth? I can't see Venus from my place. That pic was from the park next to the river. This years Venus pic was through my 12x40 bins - easier to carry

[Kain]

Everytime I looked at Venus it was a wobbly gibbus mess.

Oddly, Mercury was much more steady.

Kain