Venus Observed in Daylight
May 02, 2020
Photographer: John Chumack
Summary Author: John Chumack
Venus has been brilliant in the western sky, after sundown, in recent weeks. This photo of Venus shows detail in the sulfuric cloud tops. I imaged it during daylight (between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. local time) when it was high enough to clear my neighbor’s tree. I wanted to capture it when it was relatively far from the horizon in order to minimize atmospheric turbulence.
Venus is indeed visible to the naked eye in broad daylight if you know where to look (you can also use your telescope’s Goto function to point to it for you). Of course, you need to make sure that the Sun is blocked from view in some manner -- you can’t be too safe when looking toward the Sun.
I used a dew cap in order to prevent stray light from entering the telescope tube, which would cause extra reflections of the corrector plate. The bottom photo shows my scope set up. Then, by turning the camera gain way down and making the exposures really short, similar to imaging the Sun, I was able to snap this photo. Look for Venus blazing high in the west this evening – you can’t miss it. Photo taken on March 7, 2020 (5:57 p.m. Eastern Standard Time).
Photo Details: QHYIIIL290M. Camera & LRGB_+ (IR742_+ UV filter = L) on my C-11 @F10 Scope on my Software Bisque MyT Mount. Captured with Fire-Capture software, High-speed video Ser. file Capture and captured at 112 frames per second. Stacked over 8000 frames in Astrostakkert3, Registax6, (Wavelets) Maxim DL fine alignment & LRGB assembly, final color balance in Adobe CC.