Venus at 8 hours to Inferior Conjunction

[shahgazer]

Venus, about 8 hours before Inferior Conjunction.

Around 12.30 pm local noon time, there was a brief of good seeing, and probably the best one so far. Suits nicely as a parting shot. After that the sky seeing began to deteriorate really fast!

Even without stretching the original photo, we can easily see how the crescent has reach beyond 180 degrees around Venus.

0.4% illuminated and 5.1 deg from the Sun.

This is the closest Venus I've ever imaged (apart from 2012 transit, but even during that time I didn't follow its path few days before the transit). A personal record for me.:D

[dvj]

Exceptional work!

[N1]

Agree, there have been some great images coming from Shah, and these here are no exception. Keep up the good work. Near-solar observation can be quite addictive indeed.

Cheers Mirko

[h0ughy]

brilliant - perseverance and skills

[shahgazer]

Thanks John!



:lol: how true.



Thanks Houghy. It's been a great start for 2014!

[Sebbie]

Horns are very obvious now, that's a superb result Shah!

Regards,
Seb

[John Hothersall]

Amazing work Shah, its getting very exciting to see the Horns developing.

John.

[Regulus]

Superb Shah. That is a well deserved pay-off for your effort.
Trevor

[N1]

Hi Folks, since the weather has returned to normal over here (cloud & rain), I have tinkered with some of the images I took of Venus through the EP on the 11th. I took the 24 best shots (out of a total of 78), cropped and aligned them, then ran them through Registax. Finally, I flipped the image to get the "actual" aspect. Incidentally my first-ever attempt at image stacking.

Consider the image below. While far from "astrophotography" level, I did notice an interesting detail. There is a lighter patch around the 11 o'clock position. Initially thought that this may be an artifact of some description, however when I looked at your images Shah, I did notice a similar area at about 8 o'clock. The question is now whether your images are erect & round the right way. Their orientation suggests this. If they are, we may just have recorded some Veneral cloud detail - either an area of higher albedo, or higher transparency, depending on whether it's refracted or reflected light. And if so, I'm sure it's the size of Australia :P

Interesting, if nothing else.

Mirko

[shahgazer]

Hi Mirko.

I believe it is some kind of bright reflection on Venus' clouds. My initial thoughts were the same as yours, some artifacts during processing, but it was visible at roughly the same area the photos 2,3 days back prior to the one above. (I 've rotated my photos at roughly the same orientation as yours)

And in my twitter feed, the guys at RASC Edmonton Centre in Canada, also spotted the same glint of light in the same area... visually! :eyepop:

Check out their comments here. (https://twitter.com/EdmontonRASC/status/422091286137413632)

Interesting stuff indeed! :thumbsup:

[prokyon]

Superb, great work! It is difficult to do that.

[skysurfer]

Really great pic !

I saw Venus last Sunday with 10cm Genesis but here in Holland it is low in the sky (winter sun) so contrast was very low. After peering the image in my right eye got a pink tinge until about 10 minutes after observing, due to looking at a very bright image. But is was a crisp very narrow crescent !