Wednesday 13 June 2007

2007-06-11: Venus in UV - First Test

Last month I adquired a Baader U filter to observe Venus. Two days ago I did my first test with the filter using my C8 and a Toucam Pro webcam. The sensibility of the camera is very low in UV. Therefore, I used the camera at the limit of gain and exposure. The following images show the result with the webcam CCD in the focal plane after a postprocessing with Registax.


There some estructure was clearly visible in UV in the Venus atmosphere. But when I tried to use a Barlow lens to magnificate the image, I reduced the luminosity of the image out to the detection range of the camera. What to do?. To increase the diameter of the telescope ( I think in Leo's telescope...) or use a CCD with a wider detection range. However, a larger exposure can difficult seriously the seeing compensation in posprocessing...