To me, Copernicus is the perfect crater. It is large enough to see plenty of detail
with smaller telescopes. It’s terraced inner walls, central mountains, and
surrounding landscape are a lunar sketcher’s dream.
This sketch was done on Strathmore Windpower sketch paper with a 2HB mechanical
pencil. Post processing was done with MGI Photosuite III.
Jason Aldridge
North Port, Florida
This is a page from the observation/sketch notes of Lord Rosse, the 19th century Irish engineer and astronomer who built and operated the “Leviathan” at the time the largest telescope in the world, a 72″ metallic speculum mirror (actually there were two, one polished and ready for use and the other being polished and made ready to exchange when the first mirror started to show signs of tarnishing in the moisture prone weather of Birr Castle). This is just one page of many that Deirdre Kelleghan, the President of the Irish Astronomical Society, sent in to ASOD, Thanks Dee! We would also like to thank the the Webb Society for making these images available. Do you recognize this galaxy at the bottom of the page?
Rich Handy
ASOD Webmaster
South is up and west is to the left in this sketch I made this morning near
daybreak of day 27 for lunation 1048. I knew the view would be poor because I
could not wait at all for the scope’s primary mirror to cool down. Therefore I
kept the magnification low and decided to sketch the compelling region from the
Ocean Procellarum to Sinus Roris. At the top of the sketch closest to the lunar
equator and near the terminator, you can see crater Reiner a 53 km. crater and to
the west of this crater is the famous bright feature Reiner Gamma. Crater Olbers
responsible for the rays in the region is lost in the bright area near the limb.
Most of the craters in this late lunation have floors in darkness and look quite
spectacular through the eyepiece. The longest bright ray from south to north
passes east of the crater pair Cardanus and Krafft both about 50 km. in diameter.
On northward a couple of hundred kilometers and just west of the bright ray the
dark crater Seleucus can be seen and further along to the east of the ray lies Schiaparelli. Most of the remaining craters visible lie on the limb side of the continuing ray and include: large crater Russell (105 km.) with smaller Briggs and Briggs A just to the east.
Continuing on northward across the dark smooth ocean, craters Lichtenberg and
larger Lavoisier A can be seen. At this point the bright limb highlands feature
Harding and Dechen showing bright ejecta blankets near the edge of Sinus Roris. On
the terminator side dome complex Mons Rumker is about to experience sunset.
Finally at the far northern end of the sketch is Markov a 40 km crater on the
floor of Sinus Roris. Seeing the moon early in the morning late in a lunation is
always a pleasant and memorable sight.
Sketching:
For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper 12”x 7”, white and
black Conte’ pastel pencils a blending stump and my index finger too. Brightness
was slightly adjusted after scanning.
Telescope: 10” inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian and 21mm eyepiece 69x
Date: 10-8-2007 10:30-11:15 UT
Temperature: 22° C (72° F)
Clear, calm
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Colongitude: 234.1 °
Lunation: 27 days
Illumination: 7 %
Frank McCabe
I find Messier 5 to be one of the most beautiful globular clusters in the catalog.
Individual stars resolved nicely around a bright core at medium magnification.
This sketch was rendered on standard copy paper with a .5mm mechanical pencil. Post
processing was done with MGI Photosuite III.
Jason Aldridge
North Port, FL
Walled Plain Crater Fracastorius
Lunation day five has walled plain crater Fracastorius (124 km.) basking in the
morning sunlight on the south edge of Mare Nectaris as it has each lunar orbit
for more than three and three quarter billion years. The shallow plate shaped
basin that Fracastorius rests upon subsided from accumulated lava mass and this
over time tilted the crater toward the center of the basin. Eventually the lava
building up in the basin was able to find a breach in the low tilted north wall of
the crater and continued to flow in hiding the central peak and most of the north
wall beyond the breach. Some of the floor of Fracastorius is covered by lavas that
are lighter in color than the dark lava covering most of the Sea of Nectar.
Northward out into Mare Nectaris is the much younger, small (12 km.) bright rimmed
crater Rosse standing alone in this part of the lava sea.
Sketching:
For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper, white and black Conte’
pastel pencils and a blending stump. Contrast was slightly adjusted after scanning.
Telescope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian and 6 mm eyepiece 241X
Date: 5-22-2007 1:09-2:15 UT
Temperature: 22° C ( 72° F)
High thin clouds, calm
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Colongitude 331.8 °
Lunation 5.24 days
Illumination 32 %
Frank McCabe
Medium: graphite pencil and ink on white paper. 20inch f/5 Dobsonian at
Warrumbungles Mountain Lodge, New South Wales, Australia during the Deep South Texas Star Party (this is actually held in Australia) in March 2007. Some, obviously, see
a spider in this incredible deep sky object – I on the other hand see a Hollywood
demonic face snarling at us! Rather fun really when looked at from the safety of 170
klyrs away! Magnification was 212x and actual field of view 0.4 deg.
Rob Esson
Australia
This sketch was done on Rite in the Rain paper with colored pencils. I used the
edge of my eraser shield for the bands and blending was difficult with the waxy feel
of the Prang pencils.
An Orion ED80 was used on an LXD75 mount, all of which were on antivibration pads in the observatory. The eyepiece was a Zhumell 21-7mm zoom
Erika Rix
Zanesville, Ohio
Bow Tie Planetary in Northern Cepheus
In the northern reaches of the constellation Cepheus one can find a planetary
nebula designated NGC 40 or Caldwell 2. This planetary has a bright easily seen
11.5 magnitude central star. The star is extremely hot and was formerly a
Wolf-Rayet star that is currently progressing to the white dwarf stage of stellar
evolution. The portion of the nebular shell I could see was round in appearance
and looked to be about 25” of arc in diameter. The shell glows at 11.7 magnitude
and is best seen by averted vision when not using a nebula filter. With a narrow
band light pollution filter, the nebular shell looked brighter and 30% larger. I
found the unfiltered view more pleasing to the eye and sketched the view without a
filter. Photographs of this object show it to have a pair of bright margin ring
arcs in the east-west direction. These arcs and the central star give the nebula a
bow tie like appearance. I was not able to see bright ring arcs under my observing
conditions with a 10” telescope. The shell spans a bit more than one light year across and lies 3500 light years away. Cepheus is in a favorable viewing location this time of year for northern latitudes.
Sketching:
Date and Time: 9-15-2007, 2:30-2:55 UT
Scope: 10” f /5.7 Dobsonian. 21mm and 12mm eyepieces 70x and 121x
8”x 12” white sketching paper, B, 2B graphite pencils, scanned and inverted, star
magnitude adjustments using Paint
Averted vision was a very useful aid in drawing the extent of this planetary nebula.
Seeing: Pickering 7/10
Transparency: above average 4/5
Nelm: 4.7
Frank McCabe
An image of the moon (48% illuminated) was taken by students J. McLaughlin, C.
Keller, and C. Lacroix at the school observatory on September 18th. P. Presby took
that image, projected it, and created a sketch. In the image of the left, his
silloutte appears near the terminator as he contemplates how to proceed; the nearly
completed sketch appears on the right.
John Stetson
This image shows just a fraction of the art I received for my Space in
Art Celebration. Young Irish school children celebrated 50 years of space
exploration through art.
Space in Art, an exhibition of the work of over 150 children took
place in Gonzaga College Dublin on October 4th.
This was a combined effort from St Andrews NS Blackrock, St Peters NS
Walkinstown, Griffith Barracks NS Dublin with summer project work from
Donore Avenue and Bridgefoot Street children, Dublin city centre.
Wonderful expressive celebratory art in paint, pencil,
glitter,collage,3D, oatmeal, you name it, it was there in truck
loads.Moons (even Iapetus), Planets, Stars,Shuttles, Rockets,and of
course Aliens all in abundance, all bursting with colour and energy.
This exhibition will travel to Birr to take part in the 2007 Whirlpool
Star Party which is a convergence of all things astronomical in
Ireland and abroad. Space in Art was a symbiotic explosion of children’s
work along with a talk on the future of space exploration by Dr John Mason.
Many thanks to all the teachers, pupils, and other individuals who took part.
This event came from a partnership between The Irish Astronomical
Society and South Dublin Astronomical Society.
Deirdre Kelleghan
Deirdre Kelleghan
President
Irish Astronomical Society 1937 – 2007
http://www.deirdrekelleghan.com/
