‘Well, I suppose it is an awfully long way away…..’ 🤣

[Stu]

Those were the crushingly honest words my wife uttered when I showed her this picture. One I consider to be my best ever attempt at Venus 🤣.

Anyway, having a spare Baader CoolWedge currently, I decided to take the filters out and give it a try as I’ve heard that the 95% reduction in brightness is a useful way of observing this very bright planet.

Well, so it proved. In fact I think I can say that at least now I’ve seen some subtle brightness variations, mainly a dimming towards the terminator but also some subtle unevenness (if that’s a word).

This was through the FC100DC, the filter less Herschel Wedge, Vixen HR 3.4mm Planetary and taken with an iPhone 11 Pro.

[knobby]

I like it !

Ask her to have a try and we'll critique her effort 😂

[Roy Challen]

That's great! If someone said to me to try that, I would have been pretty sceptical. Good result.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Roy Challen

[PeterStudz]

Is this a single shot image? And not a frame from a video. I’ve only managed anything out of Venus via taking video.

And have you tried observing Venus during the day? Then I don’t  need any filters. And the advantage of daytime is that Venus is obviously higher in the sky so potentially less impact from our atmosphere. When observing during night time it’s certainly very bright and I certainly need a filter.

I can see dimming towards the terminator but I haven’t been convinced about any other shading from the clouds on Venus. Sometimes I think that I can see something subtle but far from far from 100% sure it’s real and not just down to the seeing. 

[Stu]

3 hours ago, PeterStudz said:

Is this a single shot image? And not a frame from a video. I’ve only managed anything out of Venus via taking video.

And have you tried observing Venus during the day? Then I don’t  need any filters. And the advantage of daytime is that Venus is obviously higher in the sky so potentially less impact from our atmosphere. When observing during night time it’s certainly very bright and I certainly need a filter.

I can see dimming towards the terminator but I haven’t been convinced about any other shading from the clouds on Venus. Sometimes I think that I can see something subtle but far from far from 100% sure it’s real and not just down to the seeing. 

It is a single shot, but these days I use Live mode on my iPhone and most of the time it picks that sharpest frame from the little sequence. Works really well on the Moon. On this one I think I picked a different frame manually.

This was at about 20.45, so it was still light and Venus was reasonably high. I have picked it up earlier before. I still found that the wedge helped. Like you I see dimming towards the terminator and some other very slight variations but far from convincing so far to me.

[PeterStudz]

2 hours ago, Stu said:

It is a single shot, but these days I use Live mode on my iPhone and most of the time it picks that sharpest frame from the little sequence. Works really well on the Moon. On this one I think I picked a different frame manually.

This was at about 20.45, so it was still light and Venus was reasonably high. I have picked it up earlier before. I still found that the wedge helped. Like you I see dimming towards the terminator and some other very slight variations but far from convincing so far to me.

I’ve used Live Mode but on the Moon & Sun, but thinking about it I haven’t on any of the planets.

Live Mode is handy and I don’t think that many people realise. Although it won’t handle RAW. However, having played around with RAW I’m not convinced it’s that much better on these kind of iPhone images. 

[Stu]

1 hour ago, PeterStudz said:

I’ve used Live Mode but on the Moon & Sun, but thinking about it I haven’t on any of the planets.

Live Mode is handy and I don’t think that many people realise. Although it won’t handle RAW. However, having played around with RAW I’m not convinced it’s that much better on these kind of iPhone images. 

The lack of RAW images is the main draw back I agree but the sharpness of a particular frame often makes up for that. I do try to use RAW as well for solar, at least so I can see which comes out best.