Shining at magnitude -4.1, and subtending an angle of 59 arc seconds, Venus was just 9.7 degrees from the Sun. This photo was taken three days before inferior conjunction, when Venus passed 8 degrees north of the Sun. Wispy clouds on the left side of the frame are remnants of a jet's contrail. Venus can get amazingly bright. So bright, it is even visible in the daytime, as when this photo was taken. Because it is so bright, you don't even need a tracking mount to take a picture of it. This photo was taken with a 420mm focal length telescope on a fixed tripod. At just about 1 arc minute in size, Venus is pretty small in the frame at 420mm of focal length. In fact, it's tiny. The image above is a 100 percent crop from the original, so you are seeing it 1:1, pixel to pixel from the sensor to the monitor. With Venus being this close to the Sun, precautions have to be taken so that the scope doesn't accidentally point at the Sun, especially since a solar filter was not being used. For this photo, I was very careful to put the Sun behind the peak of my house positioned so that it would not come out while I was taking pictures of Venus. The sky was exceptionally transparent this day, which helped in locating Venus. Even though it is exceptionally bright, it can still be hard to find in the clear blue sky because it is so small, and because your eyes don't have anything to focus on. If I had been using a correctly set up go-to mount, I could have used the computer to find the planet, but I was just using a fixed tripod. I knew it's approximate position, and found it first in binoculars, and then centered it in the scope. For planetary photography, one of the most important things is the quality of the seeing. Looking over the roof of a house is not usually a good idea because the roof absorbs heat from the Sun and re-radiates it. This usually causes poor seeing. But I was lucky on this day that the ambient temperature was cool, and that I have a light-colored roof which might have helped a bit by not absorbing as much heat as a dark roof. Once I found Venus, I used Live View to focus, but I had to put my winter coat over my head and hold it close to the camera so I could see the LCD screen in the bright sunshine. Using a black shroud, or coat, is an old trick that solar observers use. For this kind of planetary photography with a DSLR, it's a good idea to shoot a bunch of frames, and then examine them one by one at high magnification later on the computer, and hopefully pick out a lucky frame with a moment of good seeing. That's what I did here. Image Data
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