Venus crescent at morning twilight time

Setting: 1/250 second, ISO 100 (selected from an exposure bracket of 9 shots)
The tracking mount was not aligned. The focusing was not adjusted.

Time of shot: 6:59:49. Direction: 77.5 degrees East, below 9 degrees high

The seeing: The sky was brightening. I was already 15 minutes into Nautical twilight time and the atmosphere was not stable at that low altitude.

A table on Venus says its phase on April 10th is 10 degrees, so today it is thinner.

I have been waiting for a Venus crescent for half a year. My target date is one week later when Venus will be higher but this morning it was above the treetops in that direction so I took this trial shot in a hurry.

I can only get Venus in the size of a finger nail with a 360mm lens and 1.5X APS-C factor. Best can do..

I want to show that Venus has a crescent like the moon (and Mercury too).
So, instead of shooting the moon, how about shoot at Venus?

William Optics 61, 360mm telescope
Nikon D750 APS-C (1.5X) camera
tracking mount, remote shutter release,
Stellarium, timeanddate

zoomed in, cropped, no editing, JPG