An image of Venus captured less than a month before it will transit the sun on June 5, 2012. At this stage it is a narrow crescent differing from a crescent moon only in that there is no earthshine bright enough to illuminate the back side.
Details
Time 9:18 Pm PDT, May 10, 2012
slightly overcast evening with no wind, good seeing and temperature of 8 deg C.
14" SCT with Canon T3i camera operating in video crop mode.
Used 673 frames taken at ISO 400 and1/1200 sec exposure.
Video converted to avi format, then graded, aligned and stacked in Registax 6. Additional processing in Images Plus and Photoshop.