Category: Paper

Mars: May 06, 2014

Mars - May 6th 2014
Mars – May 6th 2014
Mars - May 6th 2014 colorized
Mars – May 6th 2014 colorized

Mars: May 06, 2014

Earth’s atmosphere was only permitting a mediocre view at best.
To the south bright Hellas was visible up to the limb. Mare Tyrrhenum, Mare Cimmerium and southern Syrtis Major all appeared dark, contrasting nicely with lighter Libya and Aeria. The northern reaches of Syrtis Major appeared much lighter than the southern parts. Alcyonius Nodus was intermittently visible.
A portion of Elysium could be seen but was mostly cloud covered. Utopia and the North Polar cap were plainly visible. Limb haze was present on both the preceding and following limbs.
It is always a pleasure to view and attempt to make a sketch of Mars.

Equipment and Sketching:

This is an eyepiece sketch made with a HB graphite pencil, blending stumps, white Pearl eraser on white sketching paper. Colorized version made indoors from the eyepiece sketch and notes on the colors needed from colored pencils.
Date 05/06/2014 – Time 04:10 – 05:15 UT
Telescope: 13.1 inch f/5.9 Dobsonian and 6mm eyepiece 333x with a Neodymium filter stacked on a neutral density filter; An Equatorial platform was also used
Temperature: 6°C (43°F)
Partly cloudy, breezy
Transparency 3/5
Seeing: Antoniadi III-IV

Mars: May 06, 2014 04:30 UT
CM254°, Dist. 0.66 AU
Dia. 14.15”, visual mag. -1.1
Illum.96.5 %

Frank McCabe

Coma Cluster

Coma Cluster panorama sketch
Coma Cluster panorama sketch

“Coma Cluster” is a rich galaxy cluster, which reveals dozens of galaxies even through an amateur telescope under right conditions. This is a panoramic sketch, which shows ~15 of it’s members, with magnitudes down to 14

Object: “Coma cluster” (Abell 1656)
Type : Cluster of galaxies
Location: Negev desert, Israel, ~6.8 mag. sky.
Date: 04-05/04/2013 ; 02:00.
Instrument: 250mm F/5 Newtonian, 13mm Vixen LVW and 6.7mm ES82.
Media Graphite pencil sketch on a white paper. Inverted and processed in Photoshop.

Five Galaxies in Our Nearby Supercluster

Galaxies from left to right M 60, NGC 4647, NGC 4638, M 59 and NGC 4606
Galaxies from left to right M 60, NGC 4647, NGC 4638, M 59 and NGC 4606

• Object Name: From left to right: M 60, NGC 4647, NGC 4638, M 59 and NGC 4606
• Object Type: Gxs
• Location: Bonilla – Cuemca España
• Date: 03/05/2013
• Media: Graphite Pencil HB 2, torchon 1 and 130g drawing sheet
• Inverted color and processed GIMP 2.8

Greetings to all visitors of this page.

PVG. Alcorcon, Madrid 03/05/2013

M44 The Beehive Cluster

M44, The Beehive Cluster
M44, The Beehive Cluster

Howdy friends!

I want to introduce you to M44 watched from my spot. This is an interesting object even to be observed from a high polluted place like Madrid.
I hope you like it.

Object Name: M44 – The beehive cluster / Praesepe / Cúmulo del pesebre.
Object Type: Open Cluster
Constellation: Cancer; R.A.: 08h 40,1m; Dec: +19° 59′
Location: Madrid (City Center)
Date: April 28th 2014 23:00 h.(CET)
Temperature: 13 ºC
Seeing: 4/5
Telescope: Celestron nexstar 5′ S/C.
Eyepiece: 25 mm celestron + Barlow 2x.
Magnification: 100x
Filter: Astronomik UHC-E.
Media: Graphite pencil on white paper. Scanned and then inverted and processed image with GIMP

Regards and clear skies!

Saturn

Saturn - May 9, 2014 and April 30, 2014
Saturn – May 9, 2014 (above) and April 30, 2014 (below)

Desire to see the more deep ancient lunar horizon landscapes lead me to build more larger instruments,

since last autmn,s first light I have 10 nights observations with my homemade 13″ refractor [lens from China 320/3700] which has a comfortable fixed focuser in equartorial mount.

With a glass 5 times more heavier than 8″ lens this 13″ shows far majesic views of the moon and planets than the superb 8″…… and but at least on the moon limbs , the details seems to equal…. yet.

Yesterday, on a good seeing night , I could see a great view of the saturn that I have never seen yet. —————-

13″ f11.5 refractor, x530, x770, x1050

Location ; Backyard home in South. Korea

White paper [A4, Daler rowney] , graphite pencils

Trying something New with the Sun

The H-alpha Sun - May 9, 2014
The H-alpha Sun – May 9, 2014
Non inverted colors on white paper.
Non inverted colors on white paper.
Inverted
Inverted

Aloha!

I was enjoying the Sun this morning and trying to decide how to represent the most prominent features. Sketching the Sun has just not gotten me the feeling that I can really represent it as well as I would like to as far as colorizing goes. I like using black paper but it isn’t smooth enough whereas plain white paper is. But when I have tried to add color later, it just loses what I see in the scope.

So today I tried a little something different. I like how some inverted blue colors really become the right colors for the Sun. So I put some oil pastel colors to paper & inverted to see what I could use. The nice thing about the oil pastel is I can scratch off small little lines to try to get the details of the solar surface. I had to think in negative to produce the sketch in order to preserve black, white and the different tones of red. This is my 1st attempt using this technique and I am not entirely happy with it but it is a bit of an experiment.

H-alpha Sun
5/9/14
60mm Lunt 88x
Oil Pastel, white permanent pen, white paper, Lyra polycolor pencils, a needle to scratch off the oil pastels to produce dark lines
Inverted with Photoscape software

Cindy (Thia) Krach
Maui. HI

NGC 5529

Galaxy NGC 5529
Galaxy NGC 5529

Dear fellow Webb society members 🙂

I’m very sorry that you haven’t had too much from me of late, it certainly isn’t due to the fact that I have lost interest 😉

Anyhow, prompted as I often am by Owen’s superb selection of galaxy of the month here is my b&w inversion of my original sketch of NGC 5529 a beauty from Bootes, drawn using pencil and blending stumps on cartridge paper of the image delivered in psudeo real time by my 20″ F3.7 mirror and cooled Watec 120n+ deep sky video camera onto a b&w CRT monitor. 🙂

I hope you like it and I hope that you get a chance to enjoy it yourselves.

Clear Skies, Dale

Do you want to know more about my interest in astronomy? If so take a look at my Website: http://www.chippingdaleobservatory.com/

Keep up to date with observations from Chippingdale Observatory by reading the Blog http://chippingdaleobservatory.com/blog/

Light vs dark – The Jewel Box and The Coal Sack

The Jewel Box star cluster (NGC 4755) and the Coal Sack dark nebula
The Jewel Box star cluster (NGC 4755) and the Coal Sack dark nebula

Hello all,

A couple of weekends ago saw Ice In Space Astro Camp ’14 happen at Lostock in rural NSW, Australia. I arrived late on the Friday, and when I finally settled at the camp it was dark and I just didn’t feel like setting up a big scope. The sky was clear, the full brilliance of the Milky Way was arcing overhead, so it was a great chance for some wide field sketching with my little 4″ achro.

Some time ago I had made a mental note of a potential sketching target as being the area around the lovely cluster The Jewel Box in the Southern Cross. The great thing about this scope and eyepiece combination is the true field of view encompasses the Jewel Box, Mimosa or Beta Cruxius, and the western edge of the dark nebula The Coal Sack, all set off against the mottled background Milky Way. Gorgeous stuff!

The Coal Sack is also surprisingly detailed. Streamers of darker lines, patches of brighter, and ghostly arcs. These details made for a great challenge as they are, well, black… Another fainter open cluster can also be seen just to the upper right of the Jewel Box. The Southern Cross contains dozens of open clusters within its boarder.

This sketch is very close to showing the full 5deg True Field of View I had.

Object: Jewel Box and the Coal Sack.
Scope: 4″ f/5 achromatic refractor
Gear: 30mm 82deg Explore Scientific, 17X, 5deg TFOV.
Location: Lostock, NSW, Oz
Date: 25th April, 2014
Media: White soft pastel, charcoal and white ink on A4 size black paper.
Duration: approx. 2hrs