Daytime Mercury & Venus (Apr 7th)

[brianb]

The Sun was shining from a clear sky yesterday afternoon (Weds Apr 7th) & I decided to have a go at imaging Venus & Mercury - taking great care to avoid the Sun, naturally.

The seeing was very poor with a great deal of boiling. I did manage to get Venus more or less focused & obtained this image, in which the gibbous phase is clear despite the small size - Venus's apparent diameter was only 10.7 arc sec.

2010 Apr 07, 1445 UT. Celestron CPC1100, 2x Powermate (f/20), Astronomik Planet Pro 742 IR pass filter, Imaging Source DMK21 camera.

Mercury proved difficult to find with the tele extender but I did manage to image it at prime focus. Twice, just to prove that it wasn't a fluke ... The fat crescent phase is quite clear but I don't claim to have resolved any surface detail. Mercury's diameter was 7.3 arc sec.

2010 Apr 07, 1459 UT. Celestron CPC1100, prime focus (f/10), Astronomik Planet Pro 742 IR pass filter, Imaging Source DMK21 camera.

2010 Apr 07, 1517 UT. Same instrument etc.

Next time I try this I will be insulating the sunward side of the scope tube with silver foil ... I think that much of the bad seeing was due to tube currents as the seeing when observing the Sun was apparently much steadier.

[Beyond_Vision]

Nicely bagged Brian nice to see it captured at a partial phase

Regards

Kevin

[NickH]

Superb imaging!!

[AztecastroMcJ]

good captures Brian

esp as during daytime

well done

James