The Sun with AR923 & 924
The Sun in white light with active regions 923 & 924: November 19, 2006
100mm achromat refractor with 10mm Plössl e/p & MV filter for contrast.
From Albuquerque, NM (36N 106W).
(2nd frame: mysterious satellite transit at 2132UT; RA 15:40:32, Dec. 19° 35.15′)
Sketch medium: graphite on paper.
Andy English
Langrenus at the Edge of the Sea of Fertility
With the Harvest moon just past and the shadow of the setting sun approaching the eastern shore of the Sea of Fertility, crater Langrenus stands out in all its glory. Langrenus is an Eratosthenian Period crater, between one and three billion years old. This crater is about 133 km. in diameter with a rim 2.6 km. above the bright, mostly flat floor. Mountain peaks near the center stand 1 km. high. Rays from the crater can be seen projecting in a westward direction across the Sea of Fertility. Much older (four billion plus years) and slightly larger than Langrenus to the south along the terminator is the crater basin Vendelinus. The walls of this crater were dealt crushing blows delivered by the impacts that created craters Lohse, Lame and Holden which are drawn clockwise from north to south. Many additional smaller crater impacts on Vendelinus attest to the age of this old battered basin.
More than 400 km. to the northwest, grazing angle impaction created the craters Messier and Messier A. These craters exhibit a long pair of rays extending westward across the remainder of the mare. Note the perpendicular (north-south) rays centered on Messier. Laboratory experiments have demonstrated this pattern of so called “butterfly rays” can be duplicated with shallow angle high speed impacts.
Frank McCabe
Sketching:
For this sketch I used: white copy paper 6”x 8”, and a 2HB graphite pencil
at the eyepiece with the addition of marker ink to darken shadows indoors.
Telesccope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian and 9mm eyepiece
Date: 10-9-2006 5:00-5:45 UT
Temperature: 10°C (50°F)
Clear
Seeing: Pickering 5
Co longitude: 114 °
Sunset longitude: 66.1° E.
Lunation: 16.8 days
Illumination: 94%
Messier 94 is a beautiful galaxy in the constellation of Canes venatici;
with a distance of 17 million light years and a diameter of 56000 light
years, it contains about 60 billion sun masses. M 94 is a starburst galaxy.
The conditions, when I observed it, were very good, good transparency
and seeing, so I was able to clearly discern a stellar core, a brighter
inner and a darker outer halo. All of this was embedded into a faint and
distant glow, which faded into nothing at the outer rim.
Sebastian Lehner
Date: March 16, 2007
Location: Steinwald, Bavaria, Germany
Instrument: Dobsonian 8″ f/6
Constellation: Canes venatici
Seeing: I-II of VI
Transparency: I of VI
NELM: 6m4
Magnification:133x
Sketch Medium: White pastels and white ink on black cardboard.
These are sketches created by hand and processed with Photoshop CS after being
scanned. I use graphite pencil and colored pencil on white paper.
Naturally some of these are based on 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.!!
All the Best from Athens
22 March, 2007
Peter Desypris
M8 was on my list of “ambitious” sketches to draw (or redraw) for a couple years before I finally managed to tackle it. On my first attempt, I got skunked by clouds before I could finish the star field. I came back a couple nights later, and the outflow of clouds from a thunderstorm to the east threatened to bring things to a halt again. But I was patient and managed to wait out the weather.
This is such a rich and well-lit nebula/cluster, that it’s hard not to just relax and feast on its visual delights. But I had decided I was going to turn this one into a project. I wanted to capture the cluster and field stars as accurately and deeply as possible. This in itself can be a pretty tedious process, but the regular blackouts caused by interloping clouds made it very aggravating. Especially since I was doing the observation pretty late in the season, and Sagittarius was threatening to set on me. Observing shouldn’t be aggravating. Tedious from time to time, sure. But not aggravating. I was being stubborn
though, and I kept plugging along. An hour and 40 minutes later I was satisfied I had captured all I could, and as if on a merciful queue, the clouds went ahead and made a permanent home over the southwestern sky.
Something I find very interesting about the embedded cluster NGC 6530 is the grid-like geometry of its stars. It seems to bear an amplified kinship to the squared angles of M29–a junior sized favorite of mine. The UltraBlock (~UHC) filter does a great job of defining the boundaries and clots of brightness in the nebula, but I find the unfiltered view to be the most pleasing. Without the filter, the view is thickly seasoned with Milky Way field stars and the members of the open cluster just seem to nestle and burn themselves in their folded blanket of nebulosity. I noted some star color in a few places, and these are depicted in the sketch.
I created the base for this sketch on Strathmore sketch paper using 2H graphite for the initial star field. I then switched to HB graphite for the brighter stars. I then brushed in the nebulous regions with a blending stump loaded with graphite. Afterward, I replotted any stars that were blurred or diminished by the blending process.
After scanning the sketch and inverting it from negative to positive, I used a soft, transparent brush to add glow around the brighter stars. I then used a soft, transparent brush set to ‘color’ mode to apply color to the stars I had noted during my observation. Although I believe it is possible to overwork a sketch with digital tools, when care is taken not to overdo it, I’ve found these extra techniques very useful. In this case, I believe it helps to pop the brighter stars out as they appeared in the eyepiece. I feel it was particularly helpful for the core cluster stars that nestle in the nebula. In my opinion, that extra bit of glow helps merge them with the nebula and conveys the sense that they really are lighting it up, as it appeared through the telescope. Finally, the perception of color is an important part of my observations, and I feel that careful addition of color on the computer can handle this very nicely.
Object Information:
There are two main objects that compose this object. NGC 6530 which is the open cluster of stars, discovered in 1680 by Flamsteed. The nebula that these stars are imbedded in, NGC 6523, was discovered by Le Gentil in 1747. When Charles Messier catalogued it in 1764, he primarily described the cluster, and mentioned the nebula separately as surrounding the star, 9-Sagittarii. However, the nebula is now generally regarded as M8.
The distance to M8 is believed to be from 4850 to 6500 light years. If the distance given by David Eichler of 5200 light years is correct, then the nebula measures 140 x 60 light years across. The brightest portion of the nebula contains a region known as the Hourglass Nebula, which is region currently undergoing new star formation. There are also a number of dark nebulae known as globules in the Lagoon. These are collapsing protostellar clouds with diameters of about 10,000 AU.
Subject: M8/NGC 6523, 6530
Classification: Diffuse Nebula and Open Cluster
Position: Sagittarius [RA: 18:03:41.2 / Dec: -24:22:49]*
Size*: 90′ x 40′
Brightness*: bMag 5.0
Date/Time: August 19, 2006 – 10:45 PM MST (August 20, 2006 – 05:45 UT)
Observing Location: Anderson Mesa, AZ
Instrument: Orion SVP 6LT Reflector (150 mm dia./1200 mm F/L)
Eyepieces/Mag. 32 mm Sirius Plössl (37.5X)
Seeing: 3/10 Pickering
Transparency: Mag 6.8+ NELM
*Sources: SEDS, NGC/IC Project
The interacting galaxy pair consisting of NGC 3166 and NGC 3169 is one of the unsung extragalactic showpieces of the spring sky. They may be located in the north-central region of Sextans, 8.5° south of Regulus. Separated by 6.3′, these two galaxies look like nearly identical twins in my 6-inch scope; they give the strong impression of a ghostly pair of eyes peering from beneath a star-studded hood. NGC 3166 is slightly smaller and dimmer than its companion but it has a more conspicuous central region with a sharp stellar nucleus. NGC 3169 also has a bright core but it is not as well concentrated as its neighbor’s. A 12th magnitude star is superimposed on NGC 3169’s diffuse outer halo, just east of the central core. With a magnification of 60x and placing NGC 3169 near the northeastern edge of the field of view I can just squeeze in the faint galaxy NGC 3156 just west of a trio of 7th, 8th, and 9th magnitude stars (it lies just 2′ from the faintest of the three stars). This little galaxy is elongated northeast to southwest and has a slightly brighter center. A much fainter galaxy, NGC 3165, glimmers intermittently with averted vision 5.4′ southwest of NGC 3166.
William Herschel discovered NGC 3166 and NGC 3169 on December 19, 1783 with his 18.7-inch reflector. He designated them as the 3rd and 4th entries (respectively) in his catalog of “Bright Nebulae”. Both of these galaxies are included in the popular “Herschel 400″ observing list. Each of these galaxies shows evidence of tidal interaction and distortion on photographs. NGC 3169 has a highly distorted spiral arm, while the dust lanes of NGC 3166 have been fragmented and twisted as if
the entire disk has been warped by the interaction with its neighbor. It is estimated that these galaxies lie 52 million light-years away.
Subject: NGC 3166 and NGC 3169
Object Type: Interacting Galaxy Pair
Constellation: Sextans
NGC 3166 (H.I.3)
Right Ascension (2000.0): 10h 13m 45.8s
Declination (2000.0): +03° 25′ 30″
Magnitude: 10.4
Diameter: 4.6′ x 2.6′
Classification: SAB(rs)0/a
NGC 3169 (H.I.4)
Right Ascension (2000.0): 10h 14m 15.0s
Declination (2000.0): +03° 27′ 58″
Magnitude: 10.2
Diameter: 5.0′ x 2.8′
Classification: SA(s)a pec
Observer: Eric Graff
Location: Cuyamaca Mts., San Diego Co., California (4,000 ft. elevation) Date &
Time: 12 March 2007 at 07:35UT
Transparency: NELM 6.7, TLM ~14.1
Seeing: Pickering 5-6/10
Telescope: Parks Astrolight EQ6 (6” f/6 Newtonian Reflector)
Eyepiece: 15mm Parks Gold Series Plössl (60x, 52′ TFoV)
Filter: None
Sketching Materials: #2 pencil, black ink, blending stump, 24# copy paper
We sometimes imagine that clouds take on the shape of creatures. These
prominences on the south limb of the sun on Sunday 8th April ’07 have been
similarly likened to a firebird, an ostrich, a wasp and a feeding spider.
When actually trying to sketch prominences it is better not to imagine such
things or else the drawings will tend to drift irresistibly towards the
imagined beasts!
These prominences were in any case very difficult to render. They were
changing literally from minute to minute and were also ‘upside down’ in the
eyepiece. The changes were so great that I started to wonder whether I had
got their structure at all correct but later comparison with images taken at
about the same time were reassuring.
Observed from England through a single stacked SolarMax60 H-alpha ‘scope at
50-80X. There were varying amounts of high altitude cirrus haze but some
moments of high contrast clarity and atmospheric steadiness. Sketches were
made large on A4 Canford black cartridge paper using white Derwent Studio
and Derwent Watercolour pencils, the latter dry. Coloration was done in
Photoshop, this was the only modification made to the sketches after leaving
the eyepiece.
Les Cowley
2006 07 07
Lansberg/Gamma and Delta
“Wednesday night (Thursday for UT), was a practice session for imaging with my
Rebel. I finally bought a t-ring adaptor during a star party a few weeks ago and
had some fun playing with the new toy. The guys in the DSLR forum are giving me some
great pointers. Feels very strange entering that realm, but I have a feeling it
will compliment the sketching well for my observations. Plus gives me yet another
way to enjoy this hobby to the fullest!
It was then time to put the camera away and dig out my sketch kit. Paul, being the
thoughtful husband that he is, bought Tom L’s binoviewers for me last month. Tom,
if you’re reading this, I absolutely LOVE them! Wow! Thank you both so much!!!
I’ve been having a lot of fun with black Strathmore paper and Conte’ crayons for my
solar work, so with Rich in mind, I got up the nerve to try my first lunar sketch
with this media. Lansberg and the surrounding craters were my main targets that
night. I explored the terminator, tried to count craterlets in Plato, and admired
Copernicus (and was tempted to try it again, as the last time I tried to sketch that
beauty, my sketch was cut short and it was never completed).
Lansberg is from the Imbrian period and is about 41km. The central mountains stuck
out like two eyeballs in a dark room and I was pleased to see some terracing. All
the little craterlets around Lansberg belong to it with Kunowsky D being the
exception to the NW. Reinhold is trying to slip into the scene to the NE, but got
its toe stuck in the door. Montes Riphaeus was very dramatic, or at least compared
to the rest of the scene in that area.
After a great day today, which included solar observing (boy, that sun feels
great!), I set up with the binoviewers again tonight. Although seeing was poor, I
went ahead and bumped up magnification with 8mm TV Plossls (love that EP so much, I
had to get another one!). It was good enough to support the level of detail needed
to observe domes. Had I wanted to jump into a few complex craters, I believe a 20mm
would have been best. So, domes it was and why not a pair? Mons Gruithuisen Delta
and Gamma were flagging me down and I just could not resist.
They are also from the Imbrian period and close to 20km each. Looking at VMA, Delta
is classified as a mountain and Gamma is a dome. Rukl calls both of them a domelike
mountain massif. Hmmm, let’s see what Chuck Woods has to say about them. Aha! He
calls them domes, most likely formed of silicic volcanic rocks. For more reading on
this, see The Modern Moon, page 37. I would love to be one of the geologists that
Chuck suggests may someday bang on the domes with their rock hammers to see what
they are made of.
It was a bit disappointing that I didn’t see the summit crater on Gamma, but there
was an obvious darkened area on the western top portion of it. I loved buzzing
around in the all the little dips and valleys to the north of it, though. The
little raised line between Gamma and Gruithuisen K looked like a pea pod. Isn’t the
lava covered floor beautiful in that region?”
Sketches done with black Strathmore Artagain paper and white Conte’ crayons
Erika Rix
Zanesville, Ohio
Open cluster M35 in the constellation Gemini
Here’s my first observation with the SkyWatcher 102/500. This 102mm rich field scope gives a whole new perspective on deep-sky objects. With a SP 26mm EP, I get a whopping 2.7 degrees field of view at a power of x19. I hope you like the view.
Date : March 8, 2007
Time : 20.30 UT
Seeing :2.5/5
Transp. 3/5
Digital sketch made with Photopaint, based on a raw pencil sketch made behind the EP.
N down, W left orientation.
Rony De Laet
http://www.geocities.com/rodelaet, my personal website.
What a difference a day makes
This pair of sunspot drawings hails from the tail end of activity of the current solar cycle. The weekend of May 1st and 2nd 2005 consisted of two ‘blue sky’ days here in southern England, and I had the chance to observe and sketch the Sun in white light on both of them, recording the intriguing changes to AR 756 that occurred in just over 19 hours. I used graphite pencil on white cartridge paper, my favourite medium for this kind of target. For each sketch I drew the umbra first, then added the penumbral region with lighter pencil strokes drawn from the umbra outwards, with the pores being added last. The seeing conditions were very steady and not a breath of wind was to be had while I spent a happy (but very hot!) hour in front of the eyepiece each day.
Sally Russell
Sketch details:
Date: 1st and 2nd May 2005
Time: 14.20-15.30 UT & 10.05-11.15 UT respectively
Equipment: 105mm AstroPhysics APO, 9mm TV Nagler, 2 x Barlow (mag x135),
Kendrick white light filter
Additional accessories: Large brimmed straw hat and a cold drink!
Medium: Graphite pencil on white cartridge paper
Each image size: approx. 1.5″ x 1.5″
