Venus in UV, some better conditions at last!

[Pete Presland]

I have had a few sessions on Venus recently, but Monday (7th) the conditions were clearly better than recently. Captured in daylight, at an altitude around 20 degrees.

The usual set up, C9.25, Asi290mm, X1.8 Barlow & Baader UV filter! Only 15,000 frames captured, I say "only" I have been capturing well over 30,000 on most runs.

Stacked in A/S2, sharpened in CS2.

There does look some pleasing cloud detail visible, but I will leave the final say to the SGL experts

 

[Owmuchonomy]

Hi Pete, back on Venus eh!  Yes, great effort to catch clouds I would say.  Do you have an IR pass filter to try?  My Western aspect is an issue due to the neighbour's house unfortunately.  The 290 is well matched to the 9.25 with the 1.8x and those small pixels will help catch the clouds.

[Knighty2112]

It certainly seems like you got some elusive cloud details there. Well done!  

[Pete Presland]

3 minutes ago, Owmuchonomy said:

Hi Pete, back on Venus eh!  Yes, great effort to catch clouds I would say.  Do you have an IR pass filter to try?  My Western aspect is an issue due to the neighbour's house unfortunately.  The 290 is well matched to the 9.25 with the 1.8x and those small pixels will help catch the clouds.

Yes back on Venus, the obstructions in the east/south make planetary at the moment very tricky. Although I have captured a few Jupiter files.

I have several IR pass filters which I have used on Venus to tame the poor conditions, when imaging low on the horizon. I think I am oversampling to be honest, Firecapture said I was at a Focal Length=9350mm, Resolution=0.13". The IR pass gives me a sharper image, but no cloud detail.

[Owmuchonomy]

5 minutes ago, Pete Presland said:

Yes back on Venus, the obstructions in the east/south make planetary at the moment very tricky. Although I have captured a few Jupiter files.

I have several IR pass filters which I have used on Venus to tame the poor conditions, when imaging low on the horizon. I think I am oversampling to be honest, Firecapture said I was at a Focal Length=9350mm, Resolution=0.13". The IR pass gives me a sharper image, but no cloud detail.

Maybe. 1.5x would be better with the 290 but I'm not sure if that's obtainable. Yes, the IR pass is better when its a crescent phase I guess.  Still great to get the clouds, something that's eluded my efforts.

[Pete Presland]

17 minutes ago, Owmuchonomy said:

Maybe. 1.5x would be better with the 290 but I'm not sure if that's obtainable. Yes, the IR pass is better when its a crescent phase I guess.  Still great to get the clouds, something that's eluded my efforts.

I wouldn't say its "better" when its a crescent, just when conditions are poor and I know I am not going to capture any cloud detail anyway. As Venus grows in size, hopefully it will get a bit easier to capture some more detail, although phase size will shrink as well. 

[MarsG76]

Nice one.. you definitely captured the "V" cloud structure.

 

[morimarty]

Thats a great capture Pete with some very rarely seen cloud detail visable. PS what I would give for a 1.5x barlow

[Pete Presland]

10 hours ago, morimarty said:

Thats a great capture Pete with some very rarely seen cloud detail visable. PS what I would give for a 1.5x barlow

I think I saw a X1.6 Barlow somewhere, might have an antares make maybe?

The Televue X1.8 Barlow I do use is no longer available.

[orion25]

Detail! I see detail there! Great work, Pete. I want to image Venus as it gets larger with my 180mm Mak. I have a shorty 2x Barlow. Looks like I need to get the Baader UV filter to try to capture any cloud detail.

[Pete Presland]

You could try a no 47 violet filter, which is much cheaper. Not the same obviously, i did look into getting schott uv filter glass before the Baader, with no success. 

[bottletopburly]

Nice capture Pete ? well done

 

[U Cyg]

Nice cloud detail Pete, well done!

Angie

[Stub Mandrel]

That's impressive.

Do you have any tips for safely finding venus in daylight, the only time I can realistically expect to get a bead on it.

[Pete Presland]

The one thing i ALWAYS do is to ensure the Sun is blocked from view by my shed. Venus is easy to find in binoculars if you know where to look. I position my self in the garden so that I cant possibly see the Sun by accident.

Calsky http://www.calsky.com/ will give you position of Venus from your location. At the moment its 20-30 degrees above the horizon, 3 fist widths approx. scanning the area usually reveals the planet fairly quickly. Once I get an idea of the position (the more nights you do, the easier it gets) I turn to the finder scope and 42mm 2" eyepiece.

If the Moon is around in the area this can also be used as marker.

I don't use my bino's for anything other than astronomy usually, so they are always close to focus.

As I have watching Venus now for a few weeks, I have a good idea roughly where it will be. A few mental notes of any local landmarks that will give an idea of direction, rather than altitude I find helpful as well.

All a bit easier in the morning though, when you can just follow up into daylight and a decent altitude

Obviously safety is the most important aspect of this procedure, block the Sun from view so can not accidently see it!

[Stub Mandrel]

Thanks Pete!