Aureole - Venus, Jupiter and ISS


A cloud corona round the moon is a common sight but the planets are usually too faint to show much more than the aureole, the brightest inner region of the corona. If the cloud is very thin this just shows up as a small circular patch of light round the planet. Longer exposures with a sensitive enough camera can show the slight bluish tint of the innermost region and the brownish tint of the first ring.

The two frames below show 1, 2, 4 and 8 second exposures on Venus (top) and Jupiter. Venus is bright enough to show the brownish ring in the shorter exposures but it took the longer exposures on Jupiter to show up clearly.

The International Space Station can get almost as bright as Venus but because it is moving any corona would be smeared out in all but the shortest exposures, where it would be too faint to see clearly.

On this pass it was more comparable to Jupiter in brightness and a one second exposure shows just the brightest inner region of the aureole.


Canon 5D   20th February 2012
Wiltshire, England

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