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| Venus on 2002/9/28 |
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| Venus before Sun rise, after the Leonid meteor shower of 2001/11/18. Image taken with a camcorder from ORAS, PA. |
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 Rainbow Venus (differential atmospheric refraction) |
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2001/3/23 19:05pm EST Venus (Altitude 5 and 1/2 degrees; mag -4.2; phase 0.024, diameter 58.11"). The three Venus images were taken on 2001/3/23 in Pittsburgh, PA.
What's special about them is the color fringing caused by differential atmospheric refraction. Venus was very close to the horizon when I took the images (at 7:05pm Venus' altitude was about 5 degrees). The colors was very saturated and vivid. This is the same effect which causes 'green flash' during sunset. The time on the images was EST (the time is generated by the camcorder).
I took the images with a Celestron 8"/f6 Dob and a 9mm eyepiece. I hold a Sony camcorder by hand to the eyepiece. Then I digitized the video with a D-link DSB-V100 video capture card. The three image frames are selected when the air turbulence was minimal. I didn't do any image processing to enhance the color, that's the true color recorded by the camcorder.
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| Venus in eyepiece when the sky was still bright |
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| An original frame captured by camcorder |
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 Three enlarged (and rotated) views to show the color fringing caused by differential atmospheric refraction. |
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2001/3/22 19:26 EST. Thin Venus was very low (Alt. less than 3 degrees! mag -4.2, phase 0.029, diameter 57.74"). Captured with 8"/f6 Dob + 25mm eyepiece + camcorder. Venus was thinner than it appears here. Note the blue-green upper edge and red lower edge caused by differential atmospheric refraction. Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh.
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| Phase change of Venus in half a month. |
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