In the evening of January 20, 2020, I decided to open the capturing season on Venus. The angular size of the planet at the time of the capturing was 14.36″. The telescope previously cooled for several hours on the backyard. For capturing I used both a color camera (for getting RGB images) and monochrome (for IR and near UV). I knew that details in the atmosphere of Venus could also appear with RGB capturing, but I did not think so clearly.

Venus, January 20, 2020, 17:02.

Equipment
-telescope Celestron NexStar 8 SE
-Barlow lens cell NPZ 2x
-atmospheric dispersion corrector ZWO ADC
-filter ZWO IR-cut
-camera ZWO 183MC (7 мс,  gain 102, 138 fps, 2 minutes)
Stacking of 1500 frames from 16686 in Autostakkert, wavelets in Registax 6.
Location: Russia, Anapa, backyard.

The source video and the addition result (stack) can be downloaded here.
During processing, I used single-point alignment, since when setting several points, artifacts appear on the image.
Processing video of Jupiter (manual)

In addition, strange stripes appeared in the blue channel, similar to Newton’s rings. To eliminate them, I used the Image Analyzer, namely the frequency domain filter. With the eraser, you can remove the area responsible for the stripes in the image. Yes, while the other part of the image will be distorted, but you can make a collage from the original and processed image and get rid of the displayed defects.

Image before and after processing

I also managed to shoot with a monochrome camera. I recorded one video with a ZWO filter of 850 nm, the other with GSO filters No. 47 and NPZ SZS. Then it all combined into an RGB image using the green channel of the color camera from the image above. Some difficulties arose, since the image scale was different due to the different working length of the cameras. The rotation of the field was easily eliminated by rotating the image in the graphics editor. Next time with a monochrome camera, I will try shooting through RGB filters.

Venus, January 20, 2020

Equipment:
-telescope Celestron NexStar 8 SE
-Barlow lens cell NPZ 2x
-atmospheric dispersion corrector ZWO ADC
-camera QHY5III178m
    –ZWO IR pass 850 nm pass filter (red channel)
-filters GSO №47 + NPZ SZS (blue channel)
-camera ZWO 183MC (green channel)
-filter ZWO IR-cut
Stacking of 1000 frames Autostakkert, wavelets in Registax 6.
Location: Russia, Anapa, backyard.

As you can see, capturing a cloud cover of Venus is quite accessible for amateurs with a reasonable selection of equipment, the right approach to processing and a stable atmosphere.

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