I was delighted this morning to find this dark and large filament at the north-eastern limb of our Sun. It had the appearance of a large serpent with foot like projections anchoring it to the solar surface and then visible curving around the limb. The filament is magnetic curtains of plasma hovering over the Sun’s surface, this an especially large and detailed one. I read on the Spaceweather site that the length of the filament would measure the distance from the Earth to the Moon. That’s one big serpent!
Solar Filament & Prominence
h-alpha 60mm Lunt 35x
Maui, Hawaii
4/26/15 0800-0845 HST
Black Strathmore Artagain Paper
White Conte’ Crayon & charcoal pencils, black & white
Photoscape Software to colorize, Photoshop Software to reduce size
yesterday evening just before the altocumulus clouds of the approaching depression covered the sky, I could do another sketch of the moon: This time it was crater Posidonius and its surroundings.
Ah, by the way, this time I tried a new pen: For the bright areas (e. g. the western rims of Posidonius A and J), I took a whitecoal pen instead of chalk pen. That provided much brighter contrast.
Another novelty for me: I didn’t use a diagonal but an Amici prism, so that the view in the eyepiece wasn’t mirrored at all. The view was a bit less bright, but for the moon it’s still bright enough.
Object Name: Posidonius
Object Type: Lunar Crater
Location: Germany, Dusseldorf area
Date: 2015-04-24, 2130-2205 CEST
Media: chalk pastel pencil, whitecoal pencil and charcoal pencil on black sketching cardbox
Telescope: Celestron Nexstar 127 SLT
Eyepiece: TS HR Planetary 7mm
find attached a charcoal and pastel sketch of the sunrise at Mare Crisium. I hope you like it.
Object Name: Mare Crisium, eastern part
Object Type: Lunar Maria
Location: Germany, Dusseldorf area
Date: 2015-03-22, 2020-2100 CET
Media: chalk pastel pencil and charcoal pencil on black sketching cardbox
Telescope: Celestron Nexstar 127 SLT
Eyepiece: TS HR Planetary 7mm
Craters Diophantus and DelisleCraters Diophantus and Delisle – Labeled
On the western side of Mare Imbrium are craters Diophantus (19 km.) and Delisle (25 km.) with mons Delisle in between and closer to the crater of the same name. A dorsum or ridge here is perhaps a buried crater rim and creates a sharp edge curving demarcation on the terminator side of the Moon at the time of sketching. Some of the massifs in this region such as mons La Hire (1.5 km. high), mons Vinogradov (1.4 km.) and mons Delisle( 0.8km. high) are described by some geologists as likely left over remnants from the rings of the Imbrium impact. Additional craters seen at this observation included Euler (2.8 km.), Artsimovich (9 km.), Gruithuisen (17 km.) and Heis (15 km.)and numerous smaller unnamed.
Sketching:
For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper, 9”x 12”, white and black Conte’pastel pencils, a soft charcoal pencil, brush and a blending stump.
Telescope: 13.1 inch f/6 Dobsonian and 9mm eyepiece 221x
Date: 01-31-2015, 03:10 – 04:25 UT
Temperature: -7°C (20°F)
clear, breezy
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Co longitude: 38.7°
Lunation: 10.33 days
Illumination: 84.9 %
Phase: 45.8°
I think what I like best about solar observing is you never know what you will find going on! This large prominence at the eastern limb appeared extraordinary in its detailed and lacey appearance. Seeing was very good and at higher magnification a network of bright areas appeared, much like a picture of a neuron cell with branching filaments extending in all directions. Tilting Sun Graphics are used to denote prominence location.
Solar Prominence
1/10/15
h-alpha 60mm Lunt
Maui, Hawaii
0945-1020 HST (1945-2020 UT)
Black Canson paper, white & black charcoal pencil, watercolor pencil & Conte’ Crayon
Tilting Sun Graphics
Cindy (Thia ) L. Krach
Haleakala Amateur Astronomers
Webmaster’s note: ASOD is experiencing problems with sketch submissions where the file size exceeds the limit of the ASOD WordPress programs capability to process the file. Please be aware that when this occurs, although we do have some graphic editing programs, large files will result in two or three iterations of resizing, that may still result in a sketch that cannot be downloaded to the ASOD template. Due to the fact that I have a day job, I often put these pages together late at night, and being very tired I have difficulty trying to bring these posts together. Please be aware that we would prefer receiving files that are no bigger than 800 pixels wide. We will always resize your sketch image to 650 pixels to fit on all the the standard protocols for tablets and smart phones. Please make sure the image file size (the number of bytes the image file) contains does not exceed 500 Kilobytes. This will guarantee that your sketch is published in it’s entirety, and on time. If there are any questions, please feel free to contact us here at ASOD, we will be happy to help with any problems that are troubling you with image size issues.
Lunar crater Maurolycus and environs – December 28, 2014
Hi,
here we go with a chalk/charcoal sketch of lunar crater Maurolycus.
Object Name: Maurolycus
Object Type: Lunar Crater
Location: Germany, Dusseldorf area
Date: 2014-12-28, 1650-1720 CET
Media: chalk pencil and charcoal pencil on black sketching cardbox
Telescope: Martini 10” f/5 truss tube dobsonian
Eyepiece: TS HR Planetary 7mm
Mare Humorum including Gassendi, Rimae Mersenius and Rupes Liebig at the terminator – December 2, 2014Gassendi, Rimae Mersenius and Rupes Liebig at the terminator labeled
Aloha!
This was one of those nights things just fall together. Excellent seeing and light enough from the Moon that I could see the paper well. After finishing my sketch at the eyepiece I went inside to clean it up and was pleasantly surprised that I liked it pretty much the way it was.
110km wide Gassendi Crater showed some excellent roughened floor details with hummocks casting shadows as well as floor rilles illuminated as bright & dark lines. Rima Mersenius is brilliantly lit on the terminator and the bright scarp of Rupes Liebig can be seen at the base of the wall.
Gassendi Crater, Mersenius Rille, Rupes Liebig, Mare Humorum @11.7 days lunation
.12/2/14 2030-2140 HST
12.5″ Portaball, 227x
Canson Black paper and white and black Conte’ Crayon, white charcoal pencil
Photoscape to adjust contrast
Cindy (Thia) Krach
Haleakala Amateur Astronomers
Maui, Hawaii
“Lunar Rock Star”, a pattern of shadow and light play that resembles Elvis Presley- November 28, 2014Lunar elvis labeled“Lunar Elvis” captured with an iphone – November 28, 2014
Aloha!
A somewhat cloudy night but the Moon beckoned so I set up my ES102ED. Whoa, whats that? Its Elvis rocking out on the lunar terminator! What a fun surprise to find the dark outline of a figure standing wide appearing to play a guitar! A friend had told me about this phenomenon as well as some of the lunar alphabet visible at certain times on the terminator. I have tried to observe this before but was either too late or too cloudy. This time it was by complete surprise that I found it. I sketched at the eyepiece and cleaned up the sketch later in better light. I was also able to capture “The King” with my iPhone.
The interesting thing is that Elvis (aka Lunar V) is only visible for a short 1-2 hour window of time every month. This perfect angle of light shows not only Lunar V but also Lunar X a few hours after the first quarter. Lunar V is visible at the terminator between Mare Vaporum and Sinus Medii near Crater Ukert. Other landmarks are Hyginus Rille and Crater Triesnecker.
Glenn Chaple wrote about “Elvis and the Alphabet” in the August 2013 issue of Astronomy Magazine. Very interesting to find these “little jewels hiding in plain site” as one reader wrote.
Cindy (Thia) Krach
Haleakala Amateur Astronomers
SV102ED
Black paper, white & black charcoal pencils
2145- 2245 HST 11/28/14
0745- 0845 UT 11/29/14
Lunar craters Snellius and Stevinius – November 25, 2014
Hi,
yesterday evening, I got the opportunity to do another chalk/charcoal sketch of the moon. Here we go with my sketch of craters Snellius and Stevinus. Due to the bad seeing, I couldn’t go beyond the 10mm eyepiece this time.
Object Name: Snellius and Stevinus
Object Type: Lunar Crater
Location: Germany, Dusseldorf area
Date: 2014-11-25, 1715-1745 CET
Media: chalk pencil and charcoal pencil on black sketching cardbox
Telescope: Celestron Nexstar 127 SLT
Eyepiece: Celestron X-cel 10mm
Clear skies!
