bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Venus was shining brightly over the Rockies last night. It always seems to suck me in...

Set up the Bresser MC-100 scope with a 2.5x PowerMate (focal length: 3500mm) and QHY 462C camera on the iOptron CEM26 mount. After failing to find Venus with this configuration I dropped the PowerMate and centered Venus with scope and camera then added the PowerMate back into the config.

Venus was jumping all over the field-of-view thanks to the unstable atmosphere over the Rockies but I was already setup so captured 10380 frames of video using SharpCap. I processed this video in Autostakkert and stacked the best 10% of the frames to a final image. I then beat this image up in Lightroom and Photoshop to get the attached image.

Another frustrating planetary imaging session under the heavens!

Enjoy!

bwa

Venus (QHY 462C, Bresser MC-100, 2.5x PowerMate, CEM26)(Best 10% of 10380 frames of video) 2x Actual Size

tramsey Loc: Texas

I know zip about astrophotography. But I do know that Venus is difficult at the very best. Go out tonight and give it another ten thousand shots

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Ha, I know my limitations and I've found I get about one good night a year for planetary imaging... But tonight might just be that night. One never knows!

bwa

ORpilot Loc: Prineville, Or

Being the goddess of love, It's no wonder she is hard to capture.

nervous2 Loc: Provo, Utah

I for one have almost no experience or expertise in the area of astrophotography. I am interested, however. I suspect my question will highlight my inexperience, but here goes. Might you get a sharper image by using both very high ISO together with the fastest exposure time possible? It seems that might ameliorate the problem, at least a bit, of the atmospheric jumpiness. I liked your post a lot and showed it to my wife as we were just discussing Venus last evening and I was trying to explain why it would not be a very good candidate for human colonization. Anyway, I would appreciate any advice as to how to capture this devilish little lady photographically.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

In theory a very high ISO and very fast exposure time should work; however, I'm using an astro-camera which doesn't have much leeway regarding gain, i.e.: its version of ISO. As it was I was using a gain of 200 and a video exposure of 1.8ms (1/555 sec).

bwa

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

Well, you tried, Brian.
I don't bother with planetary hardly ever because it gets so frustrating.
But I did capture Neptune and all 4 of it's moons way back when.
Yeah, and planetary takes such God Awful big telescopes.
Venus, yep, the Goddess of frustration.