Ever since I first became interested in astronomy, I have been fascinated by the iconic images of Earth rising above the lunar horizon from the Apollo missions. When I realised that the Moon's occultation of Venus, visible on 19 June 2020, would give me the opportunity to capture a similar image for myself, it immediately became one of my astrophotography aims of that year. I decided to capture the event with a very narrow field of view in order to enhance the 'crescent over lunar horizon' feeling and I also wanted to capture the event in colour to record the daylight blue sky. To achieve this, I used my Celestron C11 equipped with a colour planetary camera at prime focus.
In order to achieve a natural look to the image, I chose short exposures so as not to oversaturate bright Venus. This made the crescent Moon's limb barely visible in the shots (see image, right). To compensate for this low contrast I had my planetary camera's gain set to zero, so the noise in individual frames would be as low as possible. Unfortunately, some low cloud moved in during the capture a few seconds after the Moon began to hide Venus, and obscured the scene. When the sky was blue again, Venus had totally disappeared, so I took more shots of the Moon, this time with longer exposures to better reveal the details of the lunar limb.
Stacking Venus
This story is from the August 2022 edition of BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
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This story is from the August 2022 edition of BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
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