Venus

With this PITA-19 I am more than limited, so I must settle with the N150/750 on the home modified and auto-guided EQ3. Using the Calcium K line, the Venus U and a simple red filter, I obtained the following pictures. The seeing was varying, with good moments and very bad periods. The best frames I obtained with the Calcium K filter, so the final color image is K as luminance over red as orange and K as cyan. The camera, as usual, was the ASI 178MM, no cooling this time.

The session spanned for more than two hours, so I had enough time to see the clouds move.

2020.03.27. venus frames

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With the small gear, I imaged Venus. This time, the U filter delivered the best image, as a combination of the seeing and timing and the height of the planet. Modified EQ3, soapbox, N150/750, ASI 178 MM cooled, Baader Venus U, Red and Calcium K line filters were used during the session. The final picture depicted here combines the U filter as luminance, applied on top of the red as orange and u as cyan false color.

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Venus

Using the experience gathered from my balcony observatory, I tried the old gear: the N150/750 on the now modified EQ3, and targeted Venus with several filters and the cooled ASI 178MM. Most pictures came out to be garbage, but some were good enough to start mixing them together. So I created a Calcium(Red-Calcium) bicolor image. Red became orange, the Calcium K line became cyan, and the Calcium K was applied once more as a luminance layer. It was kinda the first light for the ST4-enhanced EQ3 with the soapbox-guidance.

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Venus

I imaged using the HEQ5, N250/1200, ASI 178MM (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher gear, aided by a red, Calcium K-line and a Venus U filter, all three from Baader. I used the red as orange and the U as cyan, to create the false color RGB picture, applying the K-line as a semi-opaque luminance layer on top.

With each passing day, the planet moves more and more out of the reach of my balcony observatory, these days the best horizon, the aperture being already partially covered by the corner of a wall, is at around 17:10 local time.

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Venus, false color

So I imaged Venus and deployed the technique describen earlier: the Calcium K-line got cyan, the visible light’s RGB got orange, and the false color outcome is featured here. Because I noticed that the ASI 178 tends to run at ambient plus 10-15 degrees Celsius, I made it a cooler, quite similar to the one on the ASI 224 MC, and reached ambient t – 5 degrees and maybe way less noise. Though imaging Venus like this, from a hole in a wall, on the daytime sky with two instruments may sound easy, or I may make it sound easy, it wasn’t. It was almost as hard as doing it for the first time.

HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (uv/ir filter, cooled), and ASI 178MM (Calcium K filter, cooled), home observatory, mountpusher

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Venus, false color

Now with the Calcium K line filter at hand, and some decent sky, I imaged Venus. The first problem was finding it, from my hole-in-the-wall balcony and not an exact polar alignment. To be able to pull such a feat, I had to build something: from some arduino modules, I put together an inclinometer to get the tube’s altitude, and then look for the planet at the suspected orientation for the given azimuth.

I used my usual gear, with the mentioned enhancement, with a mono camera and the Baader K-line Calcium filter, HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 178MM, Calcium K-line, and ASI224MC with the UV/IR,  home observatory, mountpusher

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Venus and its clouds

The literature tells us that it’s UV filters through which the clouds of Venus are visible. A Calcium K line filter is en route to me, but till then I still fired up my balcony observatory: it’s weekend, I am at home, and Venus is visible, so let’s take a shot. Actually, I took five shots with different settings, and then tried my best to squeeze out some clouds, cause why not. Initially, I thought the results were artifacts, but they were consistent on all five shots, even though I adjusted the ADC in the meanwhile. I was hoping then that someone else was imaging Venus at around the same time as me, so if the features proved to be consistent, then it’s no artifact. And so it happened, xcsabesz from asztrofoto.hu imaged Venus, through a filter, and the two pictures overlap nicely.

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The planetary equipment, used these month mainly to hunt down binary stars, turned to Venus this time, barely visible from the buildings blocking the western horizon.

HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher