Sun Baked Observatory Explores Venus Atmosphere During Solar Transit

 

Sun Baked Observatory Explores Venus Atmosphere During Solar Transit
We are constantly developing new ways to process and extract data from raw solar imaging. Much of these efforts are experimental and subjective. This time we've enhanced the atmosphere thickness surrounding Venus during a solar transit when Venus was passing in front of the Sun, and looked for Venusian atmospheric detail across the planet.

Topmost Image: This is the final step 4 in the processing cycle. Here we see Venus moving across the face of the sun, approaching the solar limb. The Sun and Venus final result show the appearance of detail in the atmosphere of the planet and a surrounding atmosphere of varying thickness outwards from Venus. The color shows the differentials.

Immediately Above: Step 2 in image processing will determine if any data is present in the raw image as related to the planet and the surrounding region of atmosphere, and if it warrants continued processing.

Left: This is step 3 in the process after

step 2 determines the presence of imagery on Venus and adjacent features, suggesting a surrounding band of thick atmosphere that sunlight is filtering through. The changing solar plane also shows detail closer to the Sun's limb as it receives color encoding to specify the intensity levels of objects discerned. This is also a first level step in reducing the luminosity differential between the Sun and Venus.

At left: Step one in the solar-venus process is to acquire a raw image of Venus traveling across the face of the extremely bright sun. At these great and vast luminosity differences, Venus looks like a black featureless disk, i.e. until processing can view the underlying sheath of light differentials. This image is first processed to reduce the effects of Venus' motion and increase the clarity and sharpness of underlying features.

Old School Astro Comes Alive in the Digital World

Old School Astro Comes Alive in the Digital World
It's now amazing to see that many old school analog astronomical techniques are coming alive and being converted into the new digital world. Many of these techniques and methods need categorization.

* Digital Filters
Filters are made with numbers that dial in highly specific spectroscopic ranges using photo computer image processing

* Amping
Telescope apertures are electronically increased by factors of ten and one hundred

* Flashing
Digital images are treated like the retro film technique that applied a flash of light to the film to increase the density of the faint and dim astro image.

* Aberration Removal
Chromatic aberration and other aberrations are electronically removed.

* Dark Sky
A city setting has a lot of light pollution that did not exist years ago. Strip away some layers of light pollution using physical light pollution filters and/or a digital image process.

* Spectroscopic Film
Make your own "digital" spectral film by selecting the desired spectral characteristics using modern day filters and/or digital computer image processing.

Small Telescope Fun

Having Fun with Small Telescopes
Not every image taken with a small telescope will reveal detail like the Hubble Space Telescope but you can do the next best thing by processing your photos in new, unique, and artistically creative ways. Left: original image. Below: Enhanced

Take for example this original image of the Moon (at top), captured with a small plastic telescope at 4-inch aperture. At first glance, there's not much useful information visible and the photo is overall dark and gloomy, but what if we could have some fun and extract more data from our favorite crater Ptolemaeus?

The crater Lyot is barely shown but what if image processing could enhance it and show more, introducing shadow depressions and more detail inside the giant crater? And to boot, let's add some pizazz with creativing lighting and color flares to make it interesting and fun. The second image shows those results. A lot of detail appears inside Ptolemaeus and the entire terminator is more pronounced with new features visible. Lyot crater is clearly visible along with more terminator details. To process the image, I first used Apple Mac OS system software Photos to base enhance the image. A second program Photoscape X was used for refinement and special effects, light flares, color, enhancements and framing.

CAPTURE THE ENTIRE MOON

At left is the original gibbous Moon image taken with the same telescope. The image is small and lacks the clarity of lunar features. In the next image, the Moon is having a bout of processing with Photoscape X to increase image scale and bring out the clarity of features.

So next time out, get creative and have a ton of fun with your small telescope!