Contains:  Solar system body or event
A return to planetary with Venus, Niall MacNeill

A return to planetary with Venus

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Description

With the planets being morning objects and low to the horizon, it can be challenging to get a decent planetary image right now. I had the first clear morning in ages recently and whilst the seeing impact on the other planets I tried (Saturn, Mars & Jupiter) was pretty severe I had some moments of reasonable seeing for Venus.
I am really pleased with the purchase of the ZWO ASI 178MM and what it has done for my Venus imaging. My ASI 174MM is quite insensitive to UV and has large pixels (5.9 microns), where the ASI 178MM is ~ 4-5X as sensitive to UV and has much smaller pixels (2.4 microns). When imaging in UV a barlow will usually knock out most of the radiation, so imaging at Prime Focus is the preferred option. However, I had suffered with a poor image scale previously and a loss of detail. The 178MM has a much improved image scale of 0.13 arc secs per pixel and allows me to resolve detail down to perhaps 0.4 arc secs. That is a big improvement versus the 174MM which has an image scale of 0.3 arc secs per pixel and a resolution of closer to 1 arc sec. 
I was also pleased to see good resolution of features with the 850nm BP filter. 
I produced this false colour image following the IR (G) UV convention, but also showing the component images..

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A return to planetary with Venus, Niall MacNeill