Hi all

This image of Venus was captured on the evening of the 14th January 2009 as the planet reached maximum elongation (greatest apparent distance) from the Sun. Still, the altitude at capture was only 25° and the atmospheric turbulance was very evident.

It’s my first capture of Venus in over 10 months and I figured I need to get it out of the way while motivation is still high

The image was captured with a Schuler UV filter which reveals clouds in the upper atmophere. Unfortunately due to the bad seeing, the albedo features aren’t well defined but some contrast variations are still visible.

Venus in UV false colour

Continue reading for more information.

I captured the image with my 12″ Newt on the EQ6, with the DMK21AU04 and 5x powermate at about 8:15pm local time. The UV data was captured at 7.5fps, with gain at maximum (1023) for approx 2 minutes giving me about 1000 frames. RGB data was captured at 60fps with a shutter speed of about 1/300s and gain at about 700 (approx 70%) for about 30 seconds in each channel, giving me 1800 frames in each channel.

The separate channels were processed independantly in the beta version of Registax 5, and the LRGB composite was made in Photoshop, where the UV channel made up the luminance data (giving the contrast) with the colour coming from the combination of R, G+UV and UV making up the RGB. 

Venus is not placed in an ideal position for me in the Western sky thanks to large gum trees in my back yard, so I’ll probably wait to try again in 2009 once it swings around to the other side of the Sun to become a morning object again.

Thanks for looking.

No related posts.

posted in Astrophotography | 1 Comment