Author: Jeremy Perez

Merope’s Brilliant Pedestal

M45

M45 – The Pleiades
Sketch and Details by Rony De Laet

M45 is perhaps the most attractive open cluster for binoculars. It certainly is best viewed with a low power instrument. At a distance of 410 l-y this admirable open cluster still measures 2 full degrees across. Its true diameter is 14 l-y. M45 is with an age of 20 million years a relative young cluster, so young that the dinosaurs never saw Pleiades. Charles Messier included the cluster as the final entry of his first catalogue. Some say that Messier just added the Pleiades to arrive at 45 objects in total. M45 is a very rewarding object in any aperture. The tiny dipper can also be seen with the naked eye. It’s a fun exercise to count the number of stars visible with the naked eye. And do compare the Pleiades with the other great cluster: the Hyades. Keep in mind that the Hyades are 150 l-y away, while the Pleiades are 3 times further away. With the two clusters in your line of sight, the night sky suddenly shows a greater sense of depth, doesn’t it?
An interesting fact is offered by the nebulosity associated with the Pleiades. According to recent research, the open cluster is just passing through a nebulous cloud in the Milky Way. Photographs show this nebulosity very well. The visual observer must make use of the clearest nights to see a glimpse of this faint haziness. The brightest part of this nebula is NGC 1435, also called the Merope or Temple’s Nebula. Look for a faint comet tail S of Merope. I saw NGC 1435 with a 4” refractor before, so I knew where to look. Much to my surprise, I could detect the Merope Nebula with the 15×70. There is also a small ‘stripe’ of light visible just N of Merope. This small portion of NGC 1435 runs from SE to NW. The trick is to make the best of your averted vision while trying to avoid the bright glare from Merope.
I usually have little sense of colour. But when I studied this beautiful cluster, I compared its members with the surrounding field stars. While I swept the white looking Pleiades out of the field of view, the new field stars looked pale yellow to me. When I switched back to M45, the cluster suddenly looked rather blue. I repeated this exercise several times to convince myself that M45 does look bluer than the surrounding stars.

Site : Le Castellard Melan, France ( 44° N )
Date : September 29, 2008
Time : around 0.00UT
Binoculars : TS Marine 15×70
FOV: 4.4°
Filter : none
Mount : Trico Machine Sky Window
Seeing : 2/5
Transp. : 4/5
Sky brightness : 21.33 magnitudes per square arc second near zenith (SQM reading).
Nelm: 6.5
Sketch Orientation: N up, W right.
Digital sketch made with Corel Paint Shop Pro X2, based on a raw pencil sketch.

(Note: if the sketch does look too dark on your monitor, try to darken the room.)

Globular Cluster – M2

M2

M2
Sketch and details by Wade V. Corbei

Here is a sketch from back in August. As how I am blessed with clouds and rain, I thought I’d go through my sketchbook and start to catch up on digitizing some of my sketches.

This Globular is actually quite a treat in the EP, it is bright, compact and stars resolve fairly easily. Although not as spectacular as M13 or M15, this Globular nonetheless is quite a sight for those who enjoy looking at a gazillion stars crammed into a relatively small space.

The background stars set this Globular off quite nicely.

Crater Longomontanus in Early Morning

Crater Longomontanus

Crater Longomontanus
Sketch and Details by Frank McCabe

Over the past few weeks clear skies and good seeing have been absent at my usual observing site. Last evening all that changed at sundown with good clearing of the heavy cloud cover. As the moon moved eastward against the background stars and entered Capricornus, it was high enough in my sky for close examination and sketching. Among the craters of the southern highlands just at the terminator margin was walled plain crater Longomontanus (155 km. in diameter) basking in the early morning sunshine. This ancient impact is an old worn Nectarian period formation with a younger floor formed by liquefied eject from the formation of one of the distant large basins such as Orientale or Imbrium (see LPOD, December 30, 2007, C. Wood). Immediately east of Longomontanus I was able to see what remains of smaller older Longomontanus Z (95 km.). It is the darker shadowed depression that is only partly visible. The floor of this crater has small, mostly buried, central peaks which were casting long shadows on to the western inner crater wall. One of the three craters, Longomontanus L (16 km.) on the western floor stood out nicely in the grazing sunlight at the margin of the crater floor shadow to the north.

Sketching:

For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper 8”x11”, white and black Conte’ pastel pencils and a blending stump. After scanning, Brightness was decreased (-3) and contrast increased (+3) using Microsoft Office Picture Manager.

Telescope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian and 9 mm and 6mm eyepieces 161x, 241x
Date: 10-9-2008, 0:10 – 2:15 UT
Temperature: 10° C (50° F)
clear, calm, humid
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Colongitude: 23.4 °
Lunation: 9.7 days
Illumination: 65.9 %

Frank McCabe

North America Nebula

NGC 7000

NGC 7000 – The North America Nebula
Sketch and Details by Juha Ojanperä

Object name: NGC 7000, North America nebula
Object type: Bright nebula
Location: Parainen, Finland
Date: 9/10.10.2008
Instrument: Lens 80mm/400mm (3” lens)
Medium used: Graphite pencils and cottonwool sticks
Observing conditions: Dark, clear sky
Notes: Very large bright nebula. The distinct shape of the nebula is pretty easy to see, after some gazing and with aid of O III filter. In the North America, Mexico and the area around Gulf of Mexico are brightest, though the eastern coast is also considerably bright. The nebula gets fainter to the north and west. The Pelican nebula appeared as faint, nebulous patch a little bit to east from the eastern coast.

Celestial Lollypop

M3

M3
Sketch and Details by Jeff Young

While I suppose the bent stem looks more like a flower, M3 has always struck me as a fuzzy lollypop. However, I’ve attempted to render it as accurately as possible, without colouring the image with any impressions I might have gleaned, so that you can form your own, unique impressions.

M3 (NGC5272); globular cluster in Canes Venatici
sketched 4/31/2008 in County Louth, Ireland
as viewed through 16” Mak-Cass @ 150X; Pickering 8, NELM 5.5, SQM 20.6

My globular sketching technique is a bit different from that I use on other DSOs. I first place as many brighter stars as I can stomach using a medium-soft (HB) pencil. This sketch has about 120 placed stars, most of them in the globular itself. I then lightly smudge the image with a blending stick to show the extent of un-resolved stars. Finally, I place a harder pencil (3H) vertically on the drawing and rotate it slightly to form each of the smaller stars. These are placed randomly to reproduce the levels of shading I see in the eyepiece.

The sketch is then scanned into Photoshop and inverted.

Learning from NOAA 11003

Solar - AR 11003

Solar NOAA 11003
Sketch and Details by Erika Rix

2008 Oct 05
Solar – featuring SE quadrant and NOAA 11003
Erika Rix, PCW Memorial Observatory, 40.01/-81.56
Observation details:

AR 11003 was not visible to me in white light using my ETX70 with a TV8mm plossl. I did see granulation on and off, transparency isn’t too great today. I almost thought I detected this region briefly, but couldn’t confirm it.

In h-alpha using my Maxscope, the area was lit up very nicely by bright slender plage making some of the background around it appear darker in comparison to the rest of the disk. I didn’t see any sunspots within the active region.

There were many prominences scattered around the limb and a very short, almost spot-like filament in the southern hemisphere west of the AR.
Sketch details:

This case is a perfect example of getting carried away with fitting in all the details and then losing touch on size and contrast. The active region was smaller in real life and a little further away from the limb. I continued on with the sketch anyway, marking the error in my report and off to the side of the sketch, since it was still an accurate representation of the AR within itself.

The prominence set on the limb is accurate in size, but I rendered it too bright, again getting carried away with my markings while trying to mark in the details within the prom.

Even though I’ve made the errors, I’ve marked them accordingly and still have a successful sketch from my observation. I say successful because I’ve still achieved my goals of in depth study of the Sun through sketching and managing to record my observations of these features regardless of two areas of errors that I stated. Sometimes sketching can be like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time. The results can make you giggle, but you still trying your hand at it.

I grabbed the black paper closest to me today, so that was the Artagain paper. White Conte’ chalk, Conte’ pencil, and white Prang pencil were for the white areas. Contrast added with a stick of charcoal and a black pen. No erasing was done and blending of the solar surface was done with my finger tips. No blending was done after that.

I added a -15 brightness after taking a photo of my sketch with my Rebel outside in diffused lighting. My new scanner is still giving me fits scanning in my sketches, so I find it easier to take photos of them until I can master the new machine. Taking a little more time out of my day than I should have for fun, I managed white light and h-alpha viewing.

Globular Cluster M30

M30

M30
Sketch and Details by Frank McCabe

Fall has arrived in my neighborhood and some of the Ash trees have begun dropping their golden leaves. On this evening the sky had cleared nicely and I took that opportunity to observe and sketch a favorite globular cluster in Capricornus. Globular cluster Messier 30 has for decades been a favorite to visit as it approaches the meridian. This cluster was discovered by Charles Messier on August 3, 1764. It is located less than 7° south of gamma Capricorni and when on my meridian is only 25° above the horizon. This object is 8 kiloparsecs (26,100 light years) from us and measures somewhere between 90 and 140 light years across. The visual magnitude of this cluster is 7.4 and is the deep sky showpiece of Capricornus. The small dense core is bright and noticeably ellipsoidal in shape. Most of the cluster stars that resolve well (mag.12) are to the north of the core. Two short chains of stars extending northward give this globular the appearance of legs in the inverted Newtonian telescope view. The brightest star in the field of the sketch is fifth magnitude 41 Capricorni. If you have a dark sky this is a fine target for a small telescope.

Location of M-30: R.A.21hrs. 40 min; Dec. -23° 11 min.

Sketching:

9”x11” white sketching paper; 2H, HB graphite pencils, black ink pen and a blending stump;
Scanned and inverted; brightness of some stars adjusted with MS Paint.
Scope: 18” f/5 Dobsonian: 12 mm wide field eyepiece 190x and 7.5 mm eyepiece 304x
Date and Time: 10-4-2008, 1:45-2:30 UT
Seeing: Pickering 5/10
Transparency: Average 3/5
NELM: 4.3

Frank McCabe

Messenger’s Focus

Mercury

Mercury
Sketch and Details by Carl Roussell

Name: Mercury
Type: Planet
Location: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Date: Sep 18,2008
Medie: graphite pencils om plain paper
Telescope15cm f/8 refractor, 300x,
Filters: W21 and W23A

Note: Trying to find and name features on Mercury is challenging and will let you feel like to astronomers of the past. The light patch on the is in the right place to Apollonia, and the two dark patches Solotudo Argiphontae (north) and Tricerna (south)