Mercury (IR) & Venus (UV) 2013-10-07

[lepton3 (Ivan)]

Well here's something that doesn't happen often.

Struggled with wind, clouds, jetstream, and really shifty seeing to try and get Mercury and Venus starting at around 4:30pm local time.

The videos all just looked so awful, I was not motivated to rush in and stack them, as I usually am.

They sat around on the HDD until tonight when I eventually worked up the motivation to have a look at what I'd caught. But on stacking, the Mercury is possibly my best result so far, and the Venus has reasonable detail, and is one of the better images of this elongation!

-Ivan

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Awesome!

[Liz]

Wow, very nice Ivan!

[brian nordstrom (As avatar)]

Great shots , you can see surface details on mercury , that's not easy to do .
Well done .
Brian.

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Incredible shots, Ivan!

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

Great detail!

[Matt Wastell (Matt)]

These look great - congratulations!

[lepton3 (Ivan)]

Thanks very much for the kind comments everyone. I was certainly pleased with the results of a frustrating session!

-Ivan

[Asso (Brett)]

quite impressive Ivan. I agree it can get frustrating but with patience and effort comes good results

[von Tom (Tom)]

Amazing and inspiring detail Ivan! Well done.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Incredible details. Very cool.

[John Hothersall]

I know what you mean about not rushing to process fuzzy rubbish and then getting a pleasant suprise. The Mercury on is most impressive with fine detail showing.

John.

[dvj (John)]

Surface details on Mercury? I have never seen that in an amateur image before. Wow. Through a telescope, all I've ever seen of Mercury is a mushy bright featureless object. Well done!

[lepton3 (Ivan)]

Once again, thanks for the comments.

Originally Posted by dvj

Surface details on Mercury? I have never seen that in an amateur image before. Wow. Through a telescope, all I've ever seen of Mercury is a mushy bright featureless object. Well done!

Well, I had to have a look through the eyepiece in order to find Mercury against the bright sky, and it was featureless, but the phase was quite clear.

So all I can suppose is that the good seeing was fleeting, and the extended capture (20,000 frames) and IR filter allowed a good stack. Must admit I started out with foolish optimism and a Yellow filter. Many Gigs of HD space were wasted with that .

-Ivan

[AG Hybrid (Adrian)]

A fantastic picture. Seriously impressive.