Venus

[David Eckels]

Wanted to catch Venus and Mars lining up pretty close, but the god of war did not show.
80-400 @ 400 mm, processed with PureRAW, enhanced in LR, 6x in Gigapixel AI, finished in PS. Lots of artifacts, but kind of pretty. At least I got a semi-crescent. Very difficult to get in focus. I'm sure a telescope set up would do better, but I was curious what I could get with just the above process.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Pretty good, I'd say.

Not hand-held, I hope?

[David Eckels]

Not hand-held, I hope?

Actually, yes, none of the tripod shots were better

[degrub]

Did you try binning pixels from a number of exposures to build photon count and cut the noise ?
Search on the astro photo sites for free software.
 

[David Eckels]

Did you try binning pixels from a number of exposures to build photon count and cut the noise ?
Search on the astro photo sites for free software.

I didn't this time. This was shot at 1/4000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400 so not a lot of noise. I could have done that with the star field from the tripod, but then Venus would have been blown out anyway at high ISO, low shutter speed, and the focus issue moot. I have done what you suggest with Milky Way shots and it worked well.