Venus and Mercury

took another crack and venus and mercury.  unfortunately seeing was not great...

Venus 4/16/23 02:43 UTC
IR pass 850nm

Mercury 4/16/23 02:33 UTC
IR pass 850nm

i decided image venus during the day (venus is bright enough to see in broad daylight, it's just really hard to find) for 2 reasons: 

-all other things being equal, the seeing should be better with the planet at higher altitude 

-i was hoping to capture motion of venusian clouds by imaging over a long period of time.  

sadly it was a total bust. imaging runs over 20 minutes captured no cloud detail whatsoever (until earthly clouds obscured my view).  perhaps a hint of something towards the upper half as venus got lower in the sky:

Venus 4/17/23 00:36 UTC
UV

Venus 4/17/23 00:05 UTC
IR pass 850 nm

at a recent meeting of the OC astronomers, Chris Go (who admittedly doesn't image venus) suggested that sunlight saturates the daylight sky with UV ruining the detection of clouds.  or perhaps it was just a clear day on venus ;)

I have captured cloud detail in the past with this set up at twilight:

venus UV clouds

Image details:
camera ZWO ASI 290MM 
filters: ZWO IR pass 850, Baader U-filter bw 320-380nm
celestron 11" Edge HD
East Bluff, CA

4/16/23
mediocre seeing
02:43 UTC
2x barlow
IR pass 850 filter:

venus
FPS (avg.)=215
Shutter=0.746ms
Gain=351 (58%)
Frames captured=69635

mercury
02:33 UTC
2x barlow
FPS (avg.)=116
Shutter=3.281ms
Gain=436 (72%)
Frames captured=12765

4/17/23
Venus 
no barlow as UV is faint
mediocre seeing

UV filter:
00:36 UTC
FPS (avg.)=217
Shutter=2.055ms
Gain=351 (58%)
Frames captured=39233 

IR filter:
00:05 UTC
FPS (avg.)=42 ?!
Shutter=0.191ms
Gain=351 (58%)
Frames captured=12865