Venus, full spectrum
This time I used a very modest setup: the sky wasn’t promising, and indeed, the seeing was quite bad. So I put together the MC102/1300 with a barlow and an ASI 120 MM with an UV/IR cut, to capture Venus. Otherwise the unguided EQ3 did its job, given the lower magnification.
The gear is the same, but I deployed a new workflow: I start the editing on the raw stack, before applying any wavelets. The reason for this is that Venus has a nasty habit of its edge going easily overexposed. The pictures are through the Venus U and the Ca K-line filters, combined with the OIII filter.
2020-04-22. Venus U and OIII
2020-04-23 CaK and OIII
So the steps:
Same gear, this time I pushed ten minutes into the CaK and also at around ten into the OIII, though for the latter without a particular reason (I forgot to press stop).
Venus in CaK and Oiii
The gear, as usual, was the N150/750 on a modded EQ3 autoguided by the soapbox project. As a camera, it was the modded-to-be-cooled ASI178MM, with an automated, originally manual filter wheel. I used the OIII and the CaK filter this time, to create to bicolor combo.
Same gear as before, too lazy to write it down yet again. The green and CaK filters got into this picture.
Venus, green plus calcium K
The same exact gear, it’s getting boring to write it down. Only this time, it was between passing clouds, quite annoying.
(tovább…)
Venus green+U
The same gear, but now the fully automated filter wheel with its hand controller optionally connected to the soapbox project and the desktop app now controlling sharpcap — telling it which filter is active. This day the Venus U filter yielded the best result.
In fact, the pros and cons in my experience with Venus, two different barlow lenses and two different scopes, the N150/750 and the N250/1200:
| filter | pro | con |
| Venus U | brighter image | way less sharp, could be due to the barlow not being optimized |
| CaK | quite sharp | darker image needing longer expos/higher gain |
CaK and red combined
Same exact gear as before. (tovább…)
Venus with the U filter and the OIII this time
Same exact gear, except for using the Venus U filter for this shot. Was it luck or something else, this time the Venus U image was better than the Calcium K. Not the best seeing. So, the outcome is:
Venus
Same exact gear, but worse seeing. Also, it’s curious that the contrast on Venus has diminished somewhat.
