Jupiter & Venus 18 Apr 2015

[+TasKiNG]

Last night just before the clouds rolled in I grabbed my first attempt at Venus.

I'm reasonable pleased with it but had to convert it to monochrome to get rid of the colour fringing.

 

Also a shot of Jupiter

 

Celestron C8, 3x Barlow and ASI120MC camera

Edited April 19, 2015 by TasKiNG

[+RonC]

Nice, not an easy target Venus

[Perkil8r]

As Ron says, not a easy target Venus, well done! Looks to have a small hint of Venusian clouds too Nice Jupiter too. If you use PS you can move the channel layers about to help kill some of the fringing, might be worth a go.

 

I keep saying I am going to have a crack at some planetary but never seem to get round to it. Venus is high on my list!

[+TasKiNG]

Nice, not an easy target Venus

 

Thanks. i hadn't appreciated how difficult it was to capture. Nice and bright but being low down, the atmospheric turbulence was causing plenty of wobble.

 

As Ron says, not a easy target Venus, well done! Looks to have a small hint of Venusian clouds too Nice Jupiter too. If you use PS you can move the channel layers about to help kill some of the fringing, might be worth a go.

 

I keep saying I am going to have a crack at some planetary but never seem to get round to it. Venus is high on my list!

 

I've got PS so will have a play around with the channel layers, thanks. 

[philjay]

Nice one Dave, you got better focus on Venus than me last night. I had a go at these 2 but I was imaging Venus with the sun still up so contrast was low and focusing was very difficult.

[Doc]

Venus looks really good Dave, as Mike said you have captured a little of cloud structure associated with Venus.

[Werisit]

Nice shots Dave. Your Jupiter pic was taken at almost exactly the same time as Mine! I had a look at Venus a few nights back and decided it was a lost cause. You've done a great job to get that image. 

[Johnnyaardvark]

Nice work Dave, I've not had much luck visually with Venus yet this year although it appears to be getting higher in the sky so I should have another look. Would love to have a go at imaging it but doubt I have the focal length (but may well give it a go at some point anyway!)

 

You Jupiter is looking pretty nice too... part of me would like to have a colour planetary camera as well as mono one  for guiding... maybe if a get and SCT one day!

 

Mike, you should get the Meade out!

 

Best wishes,

 

Steve

[catman161]

Very nice, good work. Venus is not an easy target.

[+TasKiNG]

Thanks Guys.

My biggest issue was trying to focus using the laptop screen. Next time i'll try setting it up on a star first using a Bahtinov mask.  

Edited April 19, 2015 by TasKiNG

[catman161]

Thanks Guys.

My biggest issue was trying to focus using the laptop screen. Next time i'll try setting it up on a star first using a Bahtinov mask.

I wouldn't bother using a Bhat mask, you'll only be disappointed. Focusing on a star and then Slewing to the planet simply doesn't work. The star will be perfectly focussed and the planet will not be. Planetary focussing by eye is something you will develop as you go along and do it more. The only time where you will look at the screen and be able to say with 100% certainty that it's in focus is on those extremely rare nights of near perfect seeing. To give you an idea of how often that happens it has only happened once for me in three years where I was setup to image Mars and once I got Mars in the FOV of the ASI120MC I could see surface detail clear as day and those are the best Mars images I have ever captured.

You develop the skill of focussing with practice. It is just a question of waiting and watching, it can take an extremely long time which can be frustrating but it's all part of the fun