Venus, another first.

[JB80 (Jarrod)]

Hey all,
I had another first tonight I dragged my gear down to have a go at Venus while I still can and it was also the first time seeing it with a telescope.

Anyway I grabbed a short avi. and have done a quick stack, it was un-barlowed and not a huge stack but it's so bright I don't know what is optimal. Still I'm happy with it.

I can't work out how to sharpen correctly though, maybe not so much of an issue with Venus but I have seen what good sharpening can do to my Mars from the other day and I'm getting frustrated that I can't duplicate it and I feel once I get that under control all my planetary images will come together.

[loki78 (Jon)]

Try not to be discouraged, from what I understand (which admittedly isn't a lot) Venus is pretty damn hard to image. You don't see much visually either. I think this is due to it being covered in highly reflective clouds and having an extremely dense atmosphere.

Your Mars stuff looked great, so keep up the good work.

[JB80 (Jarrod)]

Thanks for the comment and encouragement.

I would like to get more of Venus though but I might have to wait until next time around, I definitely want to use my x2 and x3 on it and give the scope proper time to cool down.

[lepton3 (Ivan)]

Originally Posted by JB80

... have done a quick stack, it was un-barlowed and not a huge stack but it's so bright I don't know what is optimal. Still I'm happy with it.

I can't work out how to sharpen correctly though, maybe not so much of an issue with Venus but I have seen what good sharpening can do ...

Hi Jarrod, I think you will get improved results if you can take a longer stack (try to end up with around 2500 stacked frames) and can get sharper focus and less saturation. I often shoot well before sunset. Consider setting up in the shade of a building. This will give you time to get a reasonable capture.

If the seeing won't let you focus, well you are doomed and had better just try again another time!

If you can get a good focus, make sure you are not saturating. And when you stack, normalize the result to about 65%. That leaves you headroom to sharpen up, which will give you a really nice sharp limb.

Good luck!

-Ivan

[JB80 (Jarrod)]

Hi Ivan, Thanks for the tips.
If things go well this week I will have another go at it and like you said with a much longer avi, this one stacked about 800 or so frames. It was more of of poachers capture and sharpcap crashed on me so I had to use wxastro which I'm not very familiar with. But if I take the time to set up in advance at least I'll be prepared a bit better.

I'll have a go at trying to normalize the result too as that's something I haven't done either.

Thanks again.
Jarrod.