richardhandy – Page 139 – Astronomy Sketch of the Day

Sphere of influence

7th May 2007. around 21:30UT
Novo Cice, Croatia

This sketch was created on plain A4 paper using graphite pencils and
fingers (for blurring). Later it was scanned and inverted in Photoshop
after some minor contrast and brightness adjustments.
I used 8″ F6 Dobson and 6mm Super Plossl Eyepiece. Magnification was
200x and field of view was 0.25°. Limiting magnitude was 5.50 and
transparency was very good.

M5 is beautiful globular cluster in Serpens. M5 was discovered by the
German astronomer Gottfried Kirch in 1702 when he was observing a comet.
Charles Messier found it in 1764 and thought it a nebula without any
stars associated with it. William Herschel resolved individual stars in
the cluster in 1791, counting roughly 200 of them.Spanning 165
light-years across, M5 is one of the larger globular clusters known. The
gravitational sphere of influence of M5, (ie. the volume of space where
stars would be gravitationally bound to the cluster and not ripped away
from it by the Milky Way’s gravitational pull), has a radius of some 200
light-years.

At 13 billion years old it is also one of the older globulars associated
with the Milky Way Galaxy. The distance of M5 is about 24,500
light-years away from Earth and the cluster contains more than 100,000
stars up to perhaps 500,000 according to some estimates.

Vedran Vrhovac
www.inet.hr/~vevrhova/english/index.htm

Heavy light

Cardanus, Krafft, Eddington,Seleucus,Briggs, Briggs B, W Oceanus Procellarum
South Telescope build by Grubb Dublin 1868

Fl ? 18Ft 10.7inches/Objective 11.75 inches

Eyepiece? Objective by Cauchoix 1829
Dunsink Observatory Dublin
53° 22′ 60N 6° 19′ 60W
April 30th 2007
20:50UT – 21:57UT
Lunation 13.43 days
Illumination 98%
Seeing 1-2
T poor/hazy
300gm Daler Paper/Daler Soft Pastels/Conte Crayons/ Quilling
needle/Blending stick

I was fourteen years when old I first looked through the South Telescope in Dunsink Observatory. I had pestered my dad to bring me out there, a bit of a long drive in those days, before motorways.

Jupiter was on view that evening, it was crystal clear. The planet must have been quite high as I could look through the Grubb standing up.

I had my own little Tasco scope on a plastic tripod at the time not much to see in it, but the moon always got a look. Ever since I wanted to revisit that moment and look once again through the eyepiece of this well constructed classic telescope. Over the years I paid several visits to the observatory public nights, but always cloud or rain or both.

I got an idea in my head a few months ago, I asked for time to sketch something through the eyepiece this request yielded a positive answer, but it took time to set up.

April 30th 2007 I got a phone call from, let’s say my host in Dunsink “would you like to try tonight”? I was out the door and on the M50 with my gear in less then 10 minutes, an hour’s drive to the Observatory.

I was greeted warmly and the dome was opened, the scope set up, the steps in place.

My position for the next hour and ten minutes was probably the most uncomfortable sketching position in which I had ever worked. I was neither seated or standing, no tracking, and a big telescope to move.

The Grubb was so well balanced, easy to use, a joy to hold, and a privilege to use.

Left alone for the most part I quickly got into my zoned in or zoned out

(depends on your point view) sketching mode.

The eyepiece was low powered generating most likely 125X, used for public viewing, other eyepieces maybe available if I get to repeat this astronomical adventure.

Apart from the difficult sketching position, I felt so at home in Dunsink Observatory, it felt so moreish. Up and down moving the steps, to follow the Moon as she charged along heading for her bed. My concentration waned after an hour, more work to do than in my garden. I was stiff the next morning but I was high as a kite, I got to do something with this instrument made so carefully many years ago in Dublin. A full circle moment in my life, moments that seem to happen with more frequency these days.

In brief periods, when the image was still I could see much more detail and fine tones of grey than in my Dob. Eddington gave me great shapes and that ridge was so so slender, only 2% of the Moon was in darkness and even a little of that was seeping through the blackness into the day.

I admire Arthur Stanley Eddington for his communication prowess during his life.

A poem he wrote came to mind on the way home,

“Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate
One thing at least is certain, light has weight
One thing is certain and the rest debate
Light rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight. “ A.S.Eddington

Apart from this poem being about gravitational lensing, the phrase “light has weight” sticks out to me as an artist. Drawing in the sunlit wall on the western side of Eddington, 138km or so of sunlit weight, which was up till that lunation invisible, non existing until our sun made it so.

Dynamic Duo

M81 and M82

Here is another digital sketch. It’s the first one made with a digital tablet and a
pressure sensitive pen. It feels more natural than using a mouse to draw nebulosity
or to smudge out an area. The application (Photo-Paint) controls the relationship
between the pressure you apply with the pen to the tablet, and the effect produced
by brush tools in Corel PHOTO-PAINT. As you press down on a drawing tablet with the
pen, the effect produced by such tools changes. Several attributes can be changed at
the same time by pressure, like size, brightness, opacity etc. Like a common pencil,
a line can be drawn thicker by applying more pressure with the pen. I’m still in an
experimental phase with the settings. I hope you like the sketch.

Date : March 12, 2007
Time : 21.14UT
Scope : Skywatcher 102/500
EP : Vixen LV Zoom at 8mm
Power : 63x
FOV: 50′
Filter : none
Seeing : 3/5
Transp. : 2.5/5
Sketch Orientation : N up, W right.
Digital sketch made with a wireless digital tablet and a pressure sensitive pen in
PhotoPaint, based on a raw pencil sketch.
Rony De Laet

http://www.geocities.com/rodelaet, my personal website.

Jovial Giant

These are sketches created by hand and processed with Photoshop CS after being
scanned. I use graphite pencil and colored pencils on white paper.

Naturally some of these are based to looking at astrophotography, for more details.
Here are two sketches. The one is by hand and the other after being scanned and
processed with Photoshop.

With this method, I’ve created sketches of the Sun Prominences, and other objects of
the Deep Sky…

Basic equipment used: My Telescopes, ETX-125 5″/ LX 200R 8″/ and my
PST/Coronado/SolarMax 40/TMax Filter- Double Stacked.(For the Sun Sketches)

Scanner, EPSON PERFECTION 3490 PHOTO. ToUcam PRO
II-DSI-c..and my SBIG (recently) ST-2000XM.!!

Peter Desypris
Athens-Greece

Saturn in the Late 19th Century

These two sketches of Saturn appear in David P. Todd’s, A New Astronomy © 1897,
American Book Company. The first is drawn by British astronomer Henry Pratt made
on the evening of February 11, 1884 using an 8.15 inch clock driven Newtonian
telescope working at 450 power. It shows the rings of Saturn tilted most favorably
toward the earth. It appears on page 366 of Todd’s book. A brief article written
by Henry Pratt can be found in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical
Society, Volume 44, June 1884, p. 407 the article is titled: The Physical Features
of Saturn, 1884.

The second Saturn sketch in David P. Todd’s, A New Astronomy © 1897,
American Book Company which appears on page 18 was made by the well
known American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard at Lick Observatory
in 1894 (10 years after Pratt’s sketch). E.E. Barnard just 3 years before
rendering this sketch, had discovered Jupiter’s 5th moon Amalthea only
11 days after he was given permission to use the Alvan Clark 36 inch
Refractor telescope on Mount Hamilton. Note the change in appearance
of Saturn’s rings in the 10 years between sketches.

The full-length biography E. E. Barnard by William Sheehan, published in 1995, is
a truly remarkable story of triumph in the face adversity. The book is titled: The
Immortal Fire Within – The Life and Work of Edward Emerson Barnard.

Submitted by
Frank McCabe

A bright note in his Music of the the Spheres

Crater Kepler and its Rays

At nearly 12 days into the current lunation sunlight is bathing young crater
Kepler and its extensive ray system. Kepler falls into the category of a smallish
complex crater (31 km in diameter and 2.75 km deep) with a low peak rising from an
otherwise small flat central floor. Most of the floor is covered with slumped wall
debris. A small part of the inner wall appeared terraced. Crater Kepler lies
between the Oceanus Procellarum and the Mare Insularum both of which are made of
dark lavas. Very prominent rays extend from the rampart and ejecta blanket well
beyond the crater rim for more than 300 km. Some of the rays, especially in the
east, overlap rays of other craters such as Copernicus.

Crater Kepler was named by the Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli about
28 years after the death of Johannes Kepler. He also named Crater Tycho after
Tycho Brahe, the man with the accurate data measurements that helped make Kepler
famous.

West northwest of Kepler the large old crater close to the terminator is Marius.
Using a higher magnification ocular than that used in this drawing, I could see
several domes to the north of the crater in very good grazing light. Kepler is a
favorite crater target of mine as the moon approaches full phase.

Sketching:
For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper 9”x12”, white and
black Conte’ pastel pencils and a blending stump.
Telesccope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian and 9 mm eyepiece 161X
Date: 4-29-2007 2:45-3:45 UT
Temperature: 18° C (65° F)
Clear, calm
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Colongitude 51.8 °
Lunation 11.6 days
Illumination 90.5 %

Frank McCabe

A Herald of Summer

In April, later a night, a bright star comes crawling above the horizon
in the East, dragging behind it a constellation, well-known to even the
youngest of astronomers, and all at once you know that Summer is
approaching again. Wega and with it the Constellation of Lyra is rising
again, bringing with it one of the most famous objects of the summer sky,
if not one of the most famous objects of the sky altogehter: M 57,
the Ring Nebula.

This was my second attempt at sketching it, this time I used an
OIII-filter and there is no way of telling what a difference it made.
The nebula, which had before just appeared as an even ring with a
somewhat milky center, suddenly started to reveal many details, darker
and lighter areas, an elongated halo – all of which convinced me that
apart from a good sky and obersving experience an OIII-filter is one of
the most powerful tools at the hands of an observer of planetary nebulae.

The drawing, which was done with white pastels on black cardboard again,
turned out pretty well.

Sebastian Lehner

Veiling the Red Planet

2005 Martian Dust Storm

In late October during the 2005 Martian apparition, a dust storm
began to roar across the planet’s southern hemisphere. Over the
course of two nights, I was able to make four sketches of the storm
as it developed and rotated into view.

In the sketches, the dust storm can be seen wrapping out of the Solis
Lacus region. On the first evening, I was not able to detect any
color in the storm, but on the second evening, I thought I could
discern a very subtle, yellowish tint. I supplemented the
observations with 21A Orange and 80A Blue filters while using a 6″ f/
8 Newtonian at 240X magnification.

The sketches were made with 2H and HB pencils on 28# bond within 2.5″
diameter circles. For each sketch, I began by completely shading one
circle very lightly with a 2H pencil and then blending with a
blending stump. Then, using both unfiltered and 21A filtered views, I
shaded darker albedo regions with the HB pencil and blended again
with the blending stump. I described bright regions by using both art
gum and kneaded erasers to remove the base shading.

I made a second sketch of each view while using a 80A Blue filter.
This supplementary sketch consisted of a simple line drawing denoting
the brighter areas I saw.

After scanning the sketches and adjusting for contrast, I applied a
black background with a slightly blurred edge to approximate the soft
view through the eyepiece. By using additional layers in Adobe
Photoshop, I added color over the pencil drawing as described in my
notes. Where the 80A line drawing indicated bright spots, I added
some blue to the boundaries of those areas to show that they were
strong in blue light.

Jeremy Perez
http://beltofvenus.perezmedia.net

Brightest Heliocentrist

When I visit the Moon with my telescope, unless I’m working with friends on a collaborative project, I like to see what takes my fancy when I reach the terminator. Invariably something catches your eye and just won’t let it go, that is what I go for, he who shouts the loudest. On the evening of Saturday April 28th it turned out to be Aristarchus magically illuminated along the terminator.

I used my Antares 105mm F14.3 refractor, viewing through a Denk binoviewer
yeilding 163x.

Using a black sketching pad and a mix of watercolour pencils, pastel pencils and
conte sticks after 15 minutes this was the result.

Dale Holt

Sunny side up

The Sun with ARs 953 & 954

After many frustrating weeks of poor conditions, things finally let up long enough
for me to catch a few sketches of the Sun with its (also long-awaited) recent
sunspot activity. These sister ARs are quite impressive, and 953 is the largest I’ve
seen in my short observing career. I can’t wait for Solar Maximum! -æ

(Sketches done in graphite pencil (HB & 3B) on 70# sketch paper.)

Andrew English