Contains:  Solar system body or event
The 8.6% illuminated crescent Venus, Niall MacNeill

The 8.6% illuminated crescent Venus

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

Wow as Venus swings in in front of us, it is changing its apparent diameter rapidly, now 51 arc seconds…that is 10 arc seconds bigger than Jupiter. In fact in terms of apparent diameter, Venus attains the largest size of all the planets, however it turns its back to us!!! We imagine the black bulk of the planet by the thinning crescent.

This is the 8.6% illuminated crescent in colour. Beautiful is it not?

Low to the horizon the light from Venus is split into its rainbow colours by diffraction through the atmosphere, like by a prism. Perhaps even more beautiful as seen in Version B ? I used an Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector (ADC) to correct this dispersion and put the different colours back to the correct spot on the camera's sensor or my eye. The Version C animation shows the no ADC version, then no ADC but software (RegiStax) colour aligned and then the ADC version.

Comments

Revisions

  • Final
    The 8.6% illuminated crescent Venus, Niall MacNeill
    Original
  • The 8.6% illuminated crescent Venus, Niall MacNeill
    B
  • The 8.6% illuminated crescent Venus, Niall MacNeill
    C

B

Description: The rainbow crescent Venus, no ADC, no RGB alignment

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: GIF animation,
1) the rainbow Venus, no ADC no RGB alignment
2) No ADC but RGB aligned by Autostakkert
3) With ADC

Uploaded: ...

Histogram

The 8.6% illuminated crescent Venus, Niall MacNeill