Venus in the daytime

[Knighty2112]

As it was a nice sunny day I tried a little WL solar viewing, but as it was just like looking like a ginormous white snooker ball, I decided to switch to Venus (with the help of my trusty goto mount). After looking at it visually with my C8 SCT, I decided to have a go at imaging it. The below image is the best result I got out of 3,000 images with my ZWO ASI120 mc, with a light blue filter fitted (not that you'd notice with the colour of Venus). Seeing was pants, but the image came out much better than expected. Used Registax, then PS to crop & alter curves a little. Flipped image for correct orientation.

[Stu]

Looks pretty good to me! Phase looks the same as when I observed it recently. Not easy to even find in the daytime, although I find once you found it visually say with binoculars it is then much easier to find again with the naked eye. Goto obviously helps too  

[Craney]

Nice one.  Never thought it would come that good in the daytime.

[BinocularSky]

28 minutes ago, Craney said:

Nice one.  Never thought it would come that good in the daytime.

No reason why not; it has about the same albedo as off-white paint (0.77), which is easily visible against a daylight sky. (cf the Moon, which has about the same albedo as tarmac (0.1), but is still easily visible against a daylit sky)

[Knighty2112]

1 hour ago, Stu said:

Looks pretty good to me! Phase looks the same as when I observed it recently. Not easy to even find in the daytime, although I find once you found it visually say with binoculars it is then much easier to find again with the naked eye. Goto obviously helps too  

Thanks Stu. Was hard to know if the focus was correct with the wobbly seeing, but think I was pretty close with it.  

[Knighty2112]

1 hour ago, Craney said:

Nice one.  Never thought it would come that good in the daytime.

Cheers! With the seeing in the heat of the day I never thought Registax would get as good an image as this.  

[Knighty2112]

42 minutes ago, BinocularSky said:

No reason why not; it has about the same albedo as off-white paint (0.77), which is easily visible against a daylight sky. (cf the Moon, which has about the same albedo as tarmac (0.1), but is still easily visible against a daylit sky)

Surprised the moon has a albedo as low as that? Surely that has to be an average I guess of the whole moon. 

[Knighty2112]

BTW: meant to add in too that the image was taken today at approx 2:30pm UK time. 

[Knighty2112]

Approx phase of planet as per Skysafari, which matches pretty much what I got.

[Stu]

2 minutes ago, Knighty2112 said:

BTW: meant to add in too that the image was taken today at approx 2:30pm UK time. 

That is good going! It is fun viewing the planets in daytime, I’ve tracked Jupiter from twilight right through until full daylight before. Tricky to find in the first place but once it is in the scope it is pretty easy to track.

[Knighty2112]

To give an idea of how bad the seeing was with the heat when trying to image Venus with the ASI120mc, and also to show how good Registax can pull a decent image from such a mess, here's a gif I created with PIPP from the 3000 image long avi file I took with the camera via Sharpcap.

 

[morimarty]

You've worked wonders getting a very good image out of that seeing well done.

[Knighty2112]

1 hour ago, morimarty said:

You've worked wonders getting a very good image out of that seeing well done.

Thanks. Yes, it amazed me that it came out as good as it did with the seeing.  

[si@nite]

First ive seen this season, nicely done on a not so easy target!

[Knighty2112]

2 hours ago, si@nite said:

First ive seen this season, nicely done on a not so easy target!

Thanks!  

[U Cyg]

Nice image, well captured. ?

Angie

[Pete Presland]

Very nicely captured. 

The best time to image Venus, when it's nice and high in the sky.

[orion25]

Great capture, Gus! Especially with such bad seeing, geesh! Nice phase there  

Reggie

[Knighty2112]

5 hours ago, orion25 said:

Great capture, Gus! Especially with such bad seeing, geesh! Nice phase there  

Reggie

Thanks Reggie. Hoping to have another bash soon to see if I can tease out some cloud details too!