Category: Inverted

Finding a Silver Dollar in Sculptor

Object Name: NGC 253
Location: AR 0h 47′; Dec -25º 17′
Type: Spiral Galaxy Sc
Constellation: Sculptor.
Observing Location: Malpica del Tajo. Toledo. SPAIN.
Date: November 5, 2010
Time: 23h TU
Material used: graphite pencil on white paper. Sketch processed with Photoshop.
Telescope: Celestron S/C 8″ Mount Cgt5
Eyepiece: 31 mm Hyperion-Aspheric (65X).

What a wonderful galaxy! It is unfortunate that from my position this object is so low in the sky. Despite this drawback, I am convinced that no one will be disappointed if you point your telescope to NGC 523, the extraordinary Sculptor Galaxy.

More information about the sketch and NGC 253 in:

http://astrodibujo.blogspot.com/

I wish you all HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011

Rimae Run Through It

Object Name: Petavius
Object Type: Lunar Crater
Location: Bristol, UK
Date: 24th Oct 2010
Media (graphite pencil sketch at the scope and then digitized using graphics tablet and Photoshop)
I usually sketch in some detail at the scope (mainly HB and 2B). I then scanned the result into Photoshop and used a Bamboo Pen graphics tablet to remaster the sketch. The final sketch was then “blurred” a touch to simulate the actual view which is never as sharp as I would like to see!)

Observational data: I use a Nexstar 8SE teamed with a Hyperion 8-24 mm zoom. Most of the sketch was at the 8mm stop and was drawn in good seeing conditions. The moon was 17 days old. I could see the circular crater formation of Petavius situated on the South bank of Mare Fecunditatis. The steep slope was rugged and contained a few craterlets. Wrottersley could be seen in the North-West (with a central peak) while Hase and Snellius could also be seen in the South. The main feature was the central mountain inside Petavius and the Rimae that ran from this to the crater wall. Very distinctive at the angle observed. Otherwise the floor was pretty flat. To the north I could see lines running way from the crater rim. The shadow obscured most the the craters to the East.
Hope you enjoy,

Clear Skies

Chris Lee

Phaeton’s Falling Particles

Object : Meteor Shower from 3200 Phaeton(Geminids)
Date : December 13/14 2010
Time : 03:15-04:15 LST / 10:15-11:15 UT
Location : Wickenburg, Arizona USA
Medium : Charcoal pencils, white paper, paintbrush used as stump, Windows Paint for inversion, polishing and removing unwanted artifacts
Detector : Visual observation
Magnitude : Varying from 5 to -2
Weather : Moonless sky, Wispy cirrus clouds that soon dissipated, calm winds,somewhat chilly in the mid 40’s

Comments :

The Geminids for this season didn’t dissapoint ! As you can see, in my opinion, it surpassed the Zenithal Hourly Rate (ZHR) from that of this past August’s Perseids. In this one hour time frame sketch, I jotted down over 80 blazing streaks of the falling particles. Obviously, this didn’t include those that fell behind me or the ones that went unnoticed. It easily matched the confirmed rate of 120 (ZHR) or even more !!

In the sketch, I tried to cover a vast area of sky to show not only the radiant and its host constellation but also where the ‘shooting stars’ will be falling. In most cases they appear to fall a good distance away from the radiant. I chose the area with Canis Major,Orion,Taurus, Auriga, M44, M45 and high above is of course Gemini. While most of the meteors burned brightly white/yellow-or so they appeared, there was one that I caught high over my head with a yellow/green color! This meteor had a ‘double streak’ !!
I could distinctly see two greenish trails with a gap in between as it vaporized across the sky. A rather peculiar sight to witness, perhaps some of you out there have seen them too.

Well, it sure was worthed watching this shower all the way into the dawn hours and leaving me a happy camper. 😉

Wishing you dark and clear skies,

Juanchin

A Bright Open Cluster 800 Light Years Away

I want to post my 2nd best drawing about M7.

Object: M7
Constellation: Scorpius
Date: 08. 04. 2010.
Time: 1:00-1:35 UTC
Location: 27 m above sea level next to Kalo Nero, SE Crete, Greece, EU
Instrument: 60/200 Akr., 20 mm Plossl (10x magn.)
Limiting magnitude: better than 5.5
Media: white paper, black pencil (0.5mm), graphite, invert.

Gergő Kovács

Venus, Saturn and Handful of Frost

Hello!
Last night I and my Friends we have a great observation night in Oderne, in south Poland – beautiful place among Beskid mountains. We have very good, clear sky but there was very chill. We have very low temperature at night. About -20°C (about -4°F). In central Europe during the Winter, it is nothing strange. But it is necessary to be a tough to make all night observations in this conditions 😉
After many hours of the good observations we take a little nap. We have resumed our observations at 4 AM to get the first Venus and Saturn since few months.
There was intense, severe frost.

Object: Planets Venus and Saturn
Scope: SCT 5″ with SW UWA58 9mm
Time and date: December 5th, 2010. About 4:00 AM
Place: Oderne, Poland
Weather: Clear, dark sky. Heavy frost.
Technique: Graphite pencil
Tooling: Some correction with PhotoShop
Observer: Aleksander Cieśla (Wimmer)

I have a interesting foto from that observations.
There was really heavy frost. After all my equipment was operating quite good 🙂 There was strange noise from motors of my Celestron SLT mount, like howling 😉 But all night long it was operating correctly. I have little problems with corrector plate of my C5 SCT too, but dew shield works not bad. Most problems we have with the eyepieces. Puting the eyepiece to the poket at several minutes – that was an easy solution of this problem.
During that night my equipment looks like that: 🙂

Thank You, and sorry for my bad english.

A Cluster Spectacular

Object Name: M 15 (NGC 7078)
Object Type: Globular Cluster
Constellation of Pegasus
Location: Malpica del Tajo. Toledo; SPAIN
Date: 5/Nov/2010; U.T: 21:00
Media: graphite pencil, white paper, inverted GIMP2.
Telescope: SCT 8″
Eyepiece: 13 mm Hyperion.
Mag.: 155X

In the sky of the winter months we found few globular clusters. The
constellation of Pegasus is a cluster spectacular and very special: M 15. It
is perhaps the densest of all globular clusters in our galaxy and contains
the first planetary nebula discovered in a globular cluster. …
More information about the sketch and M 15 in:

http://astrodibujo.blogspot.com/

Mariano Gibaja

More than Seven

M 45 The Pleiades

Everyone has seen it. Many have sketched it. And recently I discovered in all the times I have observed it and admired its beauty I have never attempted a sketch of the Pleiades. I fail to get that great dark sky view from my location but the eyepiece shows the sisters in their blue white.
This is how I see it in a small Dobsonian telescope from my poor viewing location near Chicago .

Sketch drawn using a 4.25″ f/5 Dobsonian telescope and a 24mm eyepiece for 22 power magnification.
Partly cloudy, Seeing 6/10, Transparency 7/10
Date, Time and Place November 28, 2010, 12:00am – 12 40am, Oak Forest, Illinois
Inverted sketch with HB and B graphite pencils on white copy paper. Some star brightness adjustments with Microsoft Paint.

Frank McCabe

New Necklace Nebula

The Necklace nebula

On 2010 November 3th, Astronomy picture of the day displayed a attractive image of a new discovered nebula called Necklace nebula.
All details can be found at:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap101103.html

According to me, nobody had published a drawing of it before.
Therefore, some days after, I tried to have a look at it… and I suceeded, more easely than I thought.

Through my T635 mm dobson Obsession with an Ethos 13mm (240x) and, moreover, an extra-thin OIII filter Astrodon with a 5 nanometers band pass, the nebula was supprisingly analysable, magnitude 14 – 15v estimated.
The shape was elongated, a/b about 1.75, and west part was a bit brighter than opposite, but no bright knot could be identified !
My drawing has been carried out, as usual, from a annotated sketch done under the sky, first with pencil and china ink on an A4 white Canson paper, then inverted and improved through Paint Shop Pro.
See details and notes at www.deepsky-drawings.com.

Regards

Bertrand

P.S. Details of observation:

Object name:

IRAS 19417+1701

Object type:

Unknown

Magnitude:

99.99

RA:

19h 44m 29s

Dec:

17° 10′ 49″ N

Constellation:

SGE

Observation details

Date of observation:

04 nov. 2010 19:33 UT

Length of observation:

62 min

Object position:

Alt: 42.5°, Az: 250.3°

Weather conditions:

14h: J+++ V~0 t19° hu52% T2(?) 20h: N++ V0 t11° hu83% QZ(Cyg)21.22 L60°21.20

Observation conditions:

FWMH1.5″ mvl UMi6.4:VI3, 6.6:VI4! T1.5 P2 S2-3/240 5/519 good conditions.

Observing site:

Mas des Gres (Southern French Alps)

Instrument:

TN 635 Dobson Obsession

Main eyepiece:

Televue Ethos 6mm

Barlow:

(None)

Magnification:

519x

The Triangulum Galaxy

Attached for consideration is my sketch of the galaxy M33 as seen in my 120mm refracter at an RASC Ottawa observing site near Almonte Ontario about 45 minutes from my home in east end Ottawa. The sketch was drawn at the eyepiece using graphite on bond paper and then converted to a negative image using Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI. The sketch was done on the evening of November 2, 2010 at 9:50 local time one a night of very good seeing and transparency. M33 is almost always impossible from my suburban backyard so whenever I am at a darker site I take the opportunity to track down object that shine so nicely in rural dark skies.

Gordon A. Webster