ESA Science & Technology: Venus Amateur Observing Project

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Venus Amateur Observing Project

Equipment

The following are suggestions for the type of equipment required to make useful observations as part of the programme.

Telescope

A high quality telescope at least 8" (20 cm) in aperture is required, especially for UV-filter imaging. This can be of any optical design, although good results have been obtained with commercial Schmidt-Cassegrain and long focal length Newtonian telescopes. For telescopes with glass lens or windows (refractors and SCT’s) some attention should be paid to the type of glass used in the lens, since this may result in significant attenuation in the UV part of the spectrum. This is also true for other glass elements in the optical train, such as Barlow lens.

Camera

Images can be acquired using either a high-quality monochrome CCD camera or a monochrome digital video camera (e.g. based on webcam technology). Colour CCD cameras / video is not suitable for this project since this limits the possibility to perform meaningful filtered images, particularly in the near-UV regions. Some examples of camera's successfully employed for Venus imaging include:

Atik Instruments ATK-1HS or ATK-2HS
Lumera LU075M
Modified Philips Toucam camera with a monochrome CCD chip

Filters

To perform worthwhile imaging of Venus a core set of three filters are required:

U-Band filter (e.g. Johnson-Cousins photometric U-Band or Schott U-360, 300-400nm passband)
V-Band filter (e.g. Johnson-Cousins photometric V-Band)
I-Band filter (e.g. Johnson-Cousins photometric U-Band or an infrared custom-filter. In the case of non-standard infrared filters the cut-on wavelength and / or pass band should be noted)

Filters should ideally be photometric quality, i.e. without significant infrared leakage for the filters in the UV/visible filters. In any case the specifications (manufacturer, product number should be noted with all observations). The following filters are also useful to expand imaging possibilities:

A photometric B-Band filter
W47 or violet filter in combination with IR-blocking
Photometric R-Band filter
850LP filters (850nm cut-on)
1000LP filter (1000nm cut-on)

	Introduction
	Observing Guidelines

Last Update: 11 Jan 2008

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