Category: Colored Paper

Fire from the Twins

Object Name Geminids
Object Type Meteor shower
Location My own backyard, Deventer, The Netherlands
Date Dec. 14th, 01.15UT – 03.00UT
Media Black and white pastels on navy blue paper

Last night the rich meteor shower of the Geminids peaked (actually it was around 14.00UT this afternoon, but the most favorable time to watch it from Europe was during the dark early hours of 14 december). Once again I decided to make a pastel sketch, just like I did during the Perseid shower last August. I used the same method: I made a very global sketch of the starfield I was going to view, including the obstruction caused by the roof and a tree on a dark blue piece of paper. In the field during the observation period I drew every meteor in place with a white pastel pencil.

But the shower was so rich I hardly got time to plot every meteor in the drawing. At given times there were 4 meteors per 10 seconds! I did not count them, but I must have seen over 150 meteors (incl. the ones outside the drawing’s field of view) in the 2 hours of observing time. Incredible! Around 40 of them appeared in the area of the drawing. I observed from my own backyard from 01.15 UT until 03.15 UT. Skies were clear during this whole period, but light pollution got a nasty boost from the snow that fell earlier that evening. NELM was around 5.

Kind regards,
Roel Weijenberg
www.roelblog.nl

Midday’s Moon

Hi,
This is my october sketch of moon with naked eye. On october 29, at noon I was looking out the window and thinking: “wow, I must draw it”. The moon this day was over the buildings where I live. The roofs and chimneys was beautiful illuminated by sunlight…So I have drawn it 🙂
This sketch is created with dry pastels on blue paper.

object: moon with naked eye
location: Katowice, Poland
date: october 29, 2010
technique: dry pastels on blue paper

Katarzyna Kurdek

The Perseid Meteor Shower 2010

* Object Name: Perseids
* Object Type: annular meteor shower
* Location: near Lochem, The Netherlands
* Date: August 13, 2010)
* Media: white and black pastels on navy blue paper

Last night I wanted to try something different: drawing a meteor
shower instead of photographing it!
First I rendered a background with only stars. I used a white pastel
pencil for that. Then I added a horizon with a black pastel.
I took this background drawing to my favourite observing site, lay
down on a comfortable chair and added every meteor I observed on my
pefab sky drawing.
I made two of these drawings. This one is made between midnight and
02.00h. The second one (between 02.00h and 03.30h) can be viewed at

Perseïden 2010: helemaal goed! (ASOD 14-08-’10)

Kind regards,

Roel Weijenberg

Jupiter Has Lost a Stripe

Daylight Jupiter
Jupiter – May 23, 2010
By Jef De Wit

Everybody knows that even in a small telescope you can see on Jupiter two brown belts. However when you turn your telescope on the planet now, you will see only one stripe!

The South Equatorial Belt (SEB), twice as wide as Earth and more than twenty times as long, is not actually gone, but may be just hiding underneath some higher white clouds. The last time this happened was in 1993.

When Jupiter is visible from my garden, the Sun is already high up in the sky. It took me 15 minutes to find the planet. Searching an object (except the Sun, the Moon and Venus) with a Dobson in broad daylight isn’t an easy job! Once in the eyepiece I could even see Jupiter easily in the finderscope (9×50).

Jupiter in daylight seems like a ghost. You have the impression to look through the planet. The North Equatorial Belt (NEB) was easy to see. But I was never so happy I couldn’t find something (this doesn’t happen fast in astronomy!). The SEB was nowhere. I guess the thin line is the northern border of the SEB.

Some details are not like actual photos of Jupiter. I saw the South Polar Region (SPR) brighter than the region just north of it. The north side of Jupiter looked as white as the Equatorial Zone (EZ), but in reality it is much darker.

Information: Science@NASA

Clear skies
Jef De Wit

Object Name: Jupiter
Object Type: planet
Location: Hove, Belgium (51°09’ north lat. 4°28’ east long.)
Date and time: 23 May 2010 7.00-7.30 UT
Equipment: Orion Optics UK 12” Dobson
Eyepiece: 7mm Nagler T6 (magnification 171x)
NELM: daylight
Planet information: diam. 36.7″, mag -2.2, alt. 37°
Medium: pastel pencils, cotton swap, blending stump, blue printing paper, scanned (with some adjustments), labels were added with Paint

Pleine Lune

Full Moon
Full Moon
Sketch and Details by Christian Gros

Object Name : Pleine Lune
Object Type : Lune
Location : Besançon / France
Date : 28/04/2010
Media : Crayons Pastels sur feuille cartonnée grise

Bonjour,

Alors que je venais de changer les vis du miroir secondaire de mon télescope (18cm), pour tester ce dernier j’ai profité de la nuit de pleine lune pour faire se dessin à x70. J’ai réalisé ce dessin entierrement de nuit en environ une heure à l’aide de crayons pastels. il ne s’agissait pas de retranscrire tous les détails visibles, bien trop nombreux, mais bien montrer l’aspect principal de notre satellite.

Cordialement.

Christian Gros

Modified Google Translation:

Object Name: Full Moon
Object Type: Moon
Location: Besançon / France
Date: 28/04/2010
Media: Pencil Pastel on gray cardboard sheet

Hello,

So I had to change the screws of the secondary mirror of my telescope (18cm), to test it I took advantage of the full moon to make drawing at x70. I made this drawing at night in about an hour using pastels. It does not show all the details visible, there were far too many, but it does show the main aspect of our satellite.

Regards.
Christian Gros

The Young, Blue Pleiades

The Pleiades

Messier 45 – The Pleiades
Sketch and Details by Aleksander Cieśla

Sketch information:
Object: Messier 45 – The Pleiades
Scope: Binoculars 10×50
Place: Poland, Wroclaw – near city center
Weather: Good. Seeing 6/10. Light Pollution. Moon low over horizon.
Date: 6 February 2009.
Technique: Colored pastels on the navy blue paper
Tooling: N/A