Changing face of Venus: 5th Nov - 2nd Dec

[Sebbie]

Hi there

Venus is racing towards a close encounter with Earth early in the New Year (inferior conjunction on January 11). Angular size and brightness of the planet has been growing quickly over the past month, here's a couple of images illustrating these changes.

Taken in visible spectrum first is a composite of two f30 captures and the second a single f40 pic from beginning of November. Approximately 1200 best frames stacked in each case, y800 60 fps mode @ 1/3333 sec exposure. Processed in AS!2, Registax, ACDSee and Photoshop.

Unfortunately bmp to jpg format change seems to degrade overall quality somewhat (even with the lowest compression setting). I also got slight diffraction pattern artefact around the bright limb on November images.. seeing was hardly ideal on both evenings (only 10% of frames were usable).

Thanks for looking

- Seb

[blink138]

wow where have you been hiding then sebbie?........ love that third picture, venus looks so ghost like and ethereal, and well.....alien!
very nice and i have never been so interested in venus until some of the most amazing pics this year by some of our members
pat

[SkyViking]

Great looking Venus images, I love the colour! The view of the atmosphere look quite similar to Titan, very cool :thumbsup:

[Inmykombi]

Very nice images there.
Well done.

[Sebbie]

Thanks for words of appreciation Pat, Rolph and Geoff!

Yes I haven't had that many sessions this year partly because of work commitments, overseas travel and (most of all) pretty average seeing conditions at my southerly latitude.

Here's something else that I'd love to share (because I had so much fun with it but ultimately did not succeed :lol:) - an attempt at Venusian cloud imaging through a colour filter. Used #58 Green (24% transmission) photo visual filter, part of the standard Meade series 4000 set. The advertising brochure states: "Use on telescopes 8" aperture and larger to reject blue and red-toned structures.. increases contrast of atmospheric phenomena on Venus."

Below pic was captured at f30 approx. 45 minutes before sunset. 3 minute long avi had 1241 frames over 70% quality stacked in AS!2 and post processed in Registax, ACDsee and Astra Image.

I got very excited originally when I fiddled with hue, saturation and colour balance ACDSee settings.. all of a sudden wavy patterns appeared on the planetary disk (middle image). They were persistent irrespective of how many frames were combined and AS!2 align point location. I was sceptical though because of how hard edged these looked.. eventually I varied processing workflow and it seems that ACDSee clarity / noise reduction functions might have been introducing these artefacts following the stack (no trace exists in the right image which had colour adjustments done first).

What does everyone think? Is it possible to image Venusian clouds without the UV filter?

Cheers
- Seb