Steve Massey's Astronomy Page

Venus Data

Venus night side imaged in near infrared

Phase: 16.5% - South is up.

This 1-um image of Venus shows the planets night side (see details below). A large dark region can be seen near bottom left placed roughly where Beta Regio is situated. It may be coincidental dense cloud. Images taken in far poorer seeing on the 28th of December for confirmation were inconclusive.

My first 1-micron observation of Venus and its night side was on the 2nd July 2004. The following images from the 4th of July were taken using the same camera, a Mintron 12V1C-EX integrating video camera, a 1000nm filter (thanks to Steve Lee at the Anglo-Australian Telescope for helping with this) and 10-inch Newtonian reflector operating at f/10. North is up.

The planets sunlit side has been drastically over-exposed to enable the CCD to record the faint infrared thermal surface emissions of the night side.

The image is a stack of several hundred video frames contrast enhanced using Registax and PhotoShop. Dark and flat field frames were also used during processing of the images. Thank you also to Dr.Jeremy Bailey of the AAO for his assessment and feedback of the initial results.

Dark patches on the night side are most likely dense cloud formations silhouetted against the thermal radiation from the surface. Comparing the changed shapes and apparent movement with images taken 2 days earlier and also attempting to correlate the patches with possible cooler topographical regions against Magellan radar maps for this longitude, general opinion seems to confirm this.

A global near infrared view of the planet at 1-micron from two apparitions for illustrative purposes only. North is up. Venus from 2004 morning apparition and 2005 evening apparition when the planets lit side was around 16 to 17%

Night & Day

A short exposure of Venus taken is placed side by side here with the highly over-exposed 1um filtered exposure revealing the scale of day and night sides of the planet.

See announcement in Oz Sky & Telescope magazine January 2005 issue.

Venus Transit 2004

The amazing transit of Venus as seen from Sydney on the 8th of June 2004. A truly spectacular event to witness both at the eyepiece on the video monitor. I was quite surprised by the complete absence of the "black drop effect" even though it was highly anticipated based on historical accounts from previous observations. The seeing was very good from my observing site and I'd hoped to witness at least some evidence of refracted sunlight around the upper clouds of Venus during the progressive stages from contact 1 to contact 2 by adjusting the cameras gain and shutter speed settings to maximum values. Such an effect was not detected. Visit the animations page to see a rough short sequence mpeg movie of the transit as seen from my observing site.

Venus Transit

Venus Transit 2004

Changing Phases of Venus

The Phases of Venus

Clouds Tops of Venus

Right: Venus imaged with a U filter and Astrovid 2000 video camera on March 5th 2004. Subtle banding can be seen in the upper clouds. Processed using Registax and PhotoShop. Telescope 250mm SkyWatcher Newtonian.

Venus cloud bands

Venus at Dichotomy

venus2001a.jpg (7283 bytes)

Right: Daytime video image of Venus taken on the 27th of October 2002 only 1.25% illuminated !!!

Venus

VENUS and the ashen light - a brief paper by Steve Massey