Observation by Chris Hooker: Venus in IR, 31st May

Uploaded by

Chris Hooker

Observer

Chris Hooker

Observed

2020 May 31 - 09:07

Uploaded

2020 May 31 - 17:45

Objects

Venus

Equipment

254 mm Newtonian
2x Barlow
ZWO ASI174MM camera
IR-pass filter (650 nm)

Exposure

0.26 ms @ F/12.5

Location

Didcot, Oxfordshire

Target name

Venus

Title

Venus in IR, 31st May

About this image

Venus at 0.4% illumination, just over 5 degrees from the Sun, which is slightly further than ideal for conjunction imaging. A strip of kitchen foil was required, taped to the inside of the telescope tube, to reflect the focusing cone of sunlight and avoid it being absorbed by the black paint and generating tube currents. The mirror was partly sunlit, so the tube had to be kept covered for most of the time. The cover was removed, the image centred and a few videos captured before the heating of the primary degraded the image too much. This process was repeated every 5 minutes or so. The image is processed from a stack of the best 275 frames from three videos, each one the first capture of its sequence, processed in PIPP and Registax. An overprocessed image shows the cusp extensions, and an estimate of their extent was made by drawing lines in Powerpoint and rotating them until they ran from the centre of the planet to the extreme end of each cusp.

Files associated with this observation

Venus 31 May 20_0.png (208.9 kB)

Like this image

Peter Mulligan, Bill Leatherbarrow, Chris Dole, Martin Lewis, Jeremy Shears, David Basey, Andy Wilson, Steve Knight, Simon Kidd

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