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Venus True/False
What would Venus look like if our eyes could see in ultraviolet light? Perhaps much like this “false” color composite image which adds data in UV to images captured at the traditional red, green and blue lines of the visible spectrum.
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Wrestling with the Goddess of love.
I wrestled with Venus last night, trying to capture her beauty and the mysterious cloud tops that can be seen in the near UV wavelengths. As always, she emerged victorious… giving me a quick glimpse before drifting back into the scintillating currents of the atmosphere.
That brilliant star in the southwest at dusk is the goddess of love. Venus shows phases, just like the moon and tonight it is gibbous, just like the moon. Alas, when Venus is the evening star it hides behind the trees from my backyard observatory. These photos were taken several years ago when Venus appeared as the morning star… close in its thin crescent phase.
It is easily visible in the daytime if you know where to look.
In the full spectrum of visible light, Venus is brilliant and shrouded in a mysterious glow that confounds attempts at a sharp portrait.
Narrowing the bandwidth of visible light helps to sharpen the image (left, in green light) and with the right filter (right, in the violet wavelength of CaK) begins to show the subtle markings of its outer cloud bands.
Such a beautiful and temperamental goddess.
