Venus - 59% Illuminated
This was the last imaging session before the Coronavirus lockdown made imaging impossible. This image was taken exactly a week after a previous shot of Venus for what was going to be a sequence of images showing the planet getting bigger, brighter and more crescent-shaped. Although that sequence is now unlikely to happen, I was able to do some very rough calculations to see how much bigger the planet seems as it gets closer. In one week its size appeared to increase by about 4 pixels which translates as 1.25 arcseconds. So when converted to km, Venus was 8,188,482.03 km closer than the previous week and the amount of surface illuminated by the Sun decreased by 3.1% to 59.3%. These figures are, of course, just approximations based on measurements of the final processed image but they are broadly similar to the figures given by Stellarium and Wikipedia.
Captured with SharpCap
Processed in PIPP, AutoStakkert and Registax
Post-processed in Photoshop
Image made from 6,877 stacked video frames out of 11 x 1000 videos:
Gain 100% and 50%
Various exposures from 0.000213 seconds to 0.000667 seconds
Equipment:
Sky-Watcher Explorer-150PDS
Sky-Watcher EQ5 Mount
ZWO ASI120 MC camera
x2 Barlow with extension tube (equivalent to x3.3)
Venus - 59% Illuminated
This was the last imaging session before the Coronavirus lockdown made imaging impossible. This image was taken exactly a week after a previous shot of Venus for what was going to be a sequence of images showing the planet getting bigger, brighter and more crescent-shaped. Although that sequence is now unlikely to happen, I was able to do some very rough calculations to see how much bigger the planet seems as it gets closer. In one week its size appeared to increase by about 4 pixels which translates as 1.25 arcseconds. So when converted to km, Venus was 8,188,482.03 km closer than the previous week and the amount of surface illuminated by the Sun decreased by 3.1% to 59.3%. These figures are, of course, just approximations based on measurements of the final processed image but they are broadly similar to the figures given by Stellarium and Wikipedia.
Captured with SharpCap
Processed in PIPP, AutoStakkert and Registax
Post-processed in Photoshop
Image made from 6,877 stacked video frames out of 11 x 1000 videos:
Gain 100% and 50%
Various exposures from 0.000213 seconds to 0.000667 seconds
Equipment:
Sky-Watcher Explorer-150PDS
Sky-Watcher EQ5 Mount
ZWO ASI120 MC camera
x2 Barlow with extension tube (equivalent to x3.3)