Media Combinations – Page 16 – Astronomy Sketch of the Day

The Moon and Venus in Front of My Home

Subject: Crescent Moon and Venus in front of my home

Hi Artists,all o.k.?O.k. for me at moment.This spring is very strange,in this moment cold and clouds and rain….i’m without words.
I sent my last sketch of great vision:Crescent Moon and Venus at sunset,made with my little bino 10×50 on trypod.
I am return from work and i see that beautyfull vision on clear blu sky.The seeing was perfect,very clear and on terrace of my room i mounted my trypod and my bino.
i made very quyckly this sketch and i stay ubeliever about the shadow of Moon,i don’t see one like that! Very clear,i can see the clear and the dark zones….incredible!
Under the Moon you can see the top of cypress of the hill folded by the wind.
At next and clear sky….i hope!
Ciao,Giorgio.

Site:Pergola,Marche Region,Center Italy.
Date:14 June 2010 10 p.m. Local time.
Instrument:Bino 10×50 on trypod
Seeing:Excelent
Technics:White pastel and pen on azure paper.

The Ghost of Jupiter

The Ghost of Jupiter (NGC 3242) Near the Zenith

Sketch and Details by Serge Vieillard

This was an extraordinary adventure with the club. We spent three weeks in May 2010 in Chile, a journey of 5,500 km from Santiago to San Pedro, making many raids on the slopes of the Andean to altitude…. For my part, the use of T400-c (16 inch) is a real pleasure, gear fully adapted to this kind of situation…. The last (night) seems the most faithful to reality, the big globe including the central star was superimposed on the weak part of the expanding debris. The opportunity of the “Ghost of Jupiter” at the zenith was irresistible. The equipment was pushed to the maximum with 575x.

Object: NGC 3242 Planetary Nebula “Ghost of Jupiter” – Artist: Serge Vieillard – Sketch Date: May 2010

Timocharis

Timocharis Crater
Erika Rix

2010 06 21, 0300 UT
Timocharis
PCW Memorial Observatory, OH, USA
Erika Rix
Zhumell 16”, 8mm TV Plossl, 225 x

Phase: 64.8
Lunation: 8.66. d
Illumination: 71.3%
Lib. Lat: 7°30’
Lib. Long: 4°47’
Az: 215°14’, Alt: 27°21’

This complex crater has a crushed central relief and the area was completely enveloped with shadow. I could make out some of the western terraced walls within the crater. Heinrich (9.5 km), B (5 km) and C (4 km), were very clear as well as a small portion of the wrinkle ridge to the southeast. Timocharis was formed ~ 3.2 to 1.1 billion years ago during the Erathosthenian period. Height is estimated to be 3110 meters. Faint small rays can be spotted with decent seeing conditions.

Sketched scopeside on black Strathmore Artagain paper, charcoal, black wax pencil, white Conte’ crayon and pencils.

Whole Moon in Pastel

Moon
By Roel Weijenberg

* Object Name: Moon
* Object Type: Moon
* Location: Deventer, The Netherlands
* Date: May 25, 2010
* Media: White pastel pencil on black paper

Yesterday the Moon was very low in the sky (maximum altitude 20 degrees) so I couldn’t see him from my backyard. So I took a very old 60mm f/6,9 refractor inside the house, placed it on a EQ-1 on top of my desk. At 32x the Moon was a nice bowl, almost full. I sketched it with a white pastel pencil on black paper. The disk on the paper was approx, 5″ in diameter. It took me about 30 minutes to complete this sketch. Next time I’ll probably use a larger disk to draw finer details, but this was my first try using white pastel on black paper so I’m pretty satisfied for now.

Kind regards,

Roel Weijenberg

NGC 4755 – The Jewel Box

NGC 4755
By Scott Mellish

NGC 4755 “The Jewel Box”
Open Cluster
Crux
18/03/10
Ilford NSW Australia
56cm f5 Dobsonian
Field: 27′
Magnification: 149x
Sky Quality Meter reading: 21:46

There was a bit of haze around while I was out observing, along with intermittent thin cloud so I decided to stick with something bright.

I have sketched NGC 4755 a number of times, but I have to say that a sketch can never do justice to this very beautiful object.

With this sketch I put in an extra effort to try and get as accurate a representation as I could.

The “Jewel Box” was discovered by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille when he was in the southern hemisphere during the years 1751-53

John Hershel was suitably impressed when he observed the cluster and wrote the following description-

“this cluster, though neither a large nor a rich one, is yet and extremely brilliant and beautiful object when viewed through an instrument of sufficient aperture to show distinctly the very different colour of its constituent stars, which give it the effect of a superb piece of fancy jewellery”

NGC 4755 contains some of the most luminous supergiant stars within the Milky Way ranging from around 83 000 to 75 000 times the brightness of the Sun. The central orange coloured star in the sketch is a massive red supergiant about equal to Betelguese.

One really has to look at this object through a telescope to really enjoy the visual treat of this exquisite open cluster.

Scott Mellish.

H-Alpha Sun and Filaments – May 10, 2010

H-Alpha Sun and Filaments – May 10, 2010
By Erika Rix

2010 May 10, 1355 UT – 1610 UT
Solar h-alpha featuring filaments – Erika Rix
PCW Memorial Observatory, Zanesville, Ohio USA
DS 60mm Maxscope, LXD75, 21-7mm Zhumell

H-alpha sketch created scopeside with black Strathmore paper, white Conte’ crayon and pencil, white Prang watercolor pencil, Derwent charcoal pencil, black oil pencil.

T: 5°C-11°C, H: 45%
S: Wilson 3, T: 3.5/6
Clear/slightly hazy, light breeze
Alt: 40.3-62.8, Az: 101-139.7

Paul had a late night imaging so I brought the dogs outside with me, puppies included, to keep it quiet in the house for him. This, of course, meant lots of extra paws running around the observatory floor instead of just the steady snoring of Riser, my regular observing buddy. The views were shaking so badly that I finally gave up and tore down the rig, resetting it back up in the grass. I should have done that to begin with I suppose since seeing wasn’t the greatest and would have been a lot worse in the observatory, especially with the temps rising so quickly after our freeze last night.

There were quite a few features to concentrate on, but what really caught my eye were two areas of filaments in the NE quadrant. The transparency and seeing were just poor enough that I really struggled with pulling any detail out of the prominences on that section of the limb. I didn’t want to miss out trying to capture them as they reached inward across the disk, forming a beautiful display of soft looking filaments. Then even further inward reaching toward the center, the details were sharper with the next set of filaments.

Gibbous Moon With Sinus Iridum Detail

Moon – Gibbous With Sinus Iridum Detail
By Mark Seibold

Technical Information regarding sketch:

A 19″ X 25″ pastel sketch [with the moons disc drawn at 12 ¾”] on black Strathmore Artagain pastel paper with use of various soft to hard pastel chalks on December 26th 2009 at 5UT ~ 9UT, partly produced from direct eyepiece observation over 2 to 3 hours, then finished indoors with photos taken from the eyepiece to produce a detailed close-up of the Sinus Iridum feature at the terminator. An artists conception was added at bottom as a final touch for a total work time of 4 ~ 5 hours. Observation was through my 10.1 inch f/4.5 Newtonian telescope with use of 32mm, 12mm, 9.7mm Super Plossls and 6mm Orthoscopic eyepieces. Ambient outdoor temperature in the 750 ft elevation foothills, west of the Cascades and Mount Hood, 30 miles east of Portland Oregon was approximately 34 degrees F. Wind gusting to 20 ~ 30 mph and subsiding to still at times.

*A slightly higher quality image may be viewed at
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a109/markseibold/Moon_PastelGibbous6_SinusIr.jpg.

2010 May 6 Solar Prominences

Solar Prominences – May 6, 2010
Sketch and Details by Erika Rix

2010 May 6, 1900 UT – 2100 UT
Solar h-alpha featuring SE and SW prominences – Erika Rix
PCW Memorial Observatory, Zanesville, Ohio USA
DS 60mm Maxscope, LXD75, 21-7mm Zhumell

H-alpha sketch created scopeside with black Strathmore paper, white Conte’ crayon and pencil, white Prang watercolor pencil, Derwent charcoal pencil, black oil pencil.

T: 27.2°C-21.2°C, H: 57%-64%
S: Wilson 2-4, T: 5.5/6
Clear and calm
Alt: 58.5-37.8, Az: 229.2-259.9

I set up outside of the observatory today since the Sun was moving over the SW tree line and I didn’t want to rush my observing session. I had planned on putting in the cold crops in the garden but just couldn’t resist observing instead.

The active regions and filaments were tempting, but it had been so long since I’ve done close up prominence studies that I decided to concentrate on two limb areas instead. At the beginning of the session, the SW had a larger prominence that looked like a comma hovering over a crooked finger. I decided to move to the SE limb instead because what appeared to be a very bright hedgerow prominence with a smaller prominence beside it, turned out to a very wide set of prominences connected together, with over half of it so faint it was difficult to tease the detail out with the poorer seeing conditions at the beginning of the session.

Seeing gradually improved and I decided to go for a second sketch and just couldn’t help nabbing that comma prominence. It had already changed its shape to where it was no longer a comma, but a large loop instead. I was only able to make out the faintest portion of the loop with my Sol-Survivor cover completely shut around my head and eyepiece.

Shadows of the Lunar Caucasus Mountains

Shadows of the Lunar Caucasus Mountains
Sketch and Details by Frank McCabe

On Tuesday evening I thought I may spend some time observing Mars and perhaps make a sketch if the seeing was good enough to move to high power. Before pointing my scope at Mars I decided to take a quick look at the moon to see if there was anything interesting going on such as light rays of sunlight illuminating and creeping across the floor of a large crater. I soon forgot about Mars and raced indoors to switch sketching media. I know I can sketch twice as fast using white on black and speed is what I needed to capture the quick changing scene along the terminator. What I spotted was the dramatic shadows of the Caucasus Mountain peaks across the floor of Mare Imbrium. I quickly drew on the black Canson paper a faint, white Conte’ pastel meandering line right at the western edge of the Caucasus mountains and roughly outlined the shape of the shadows before any change in length occurred. At this point I felt I could continue sketching in the normal manner. Craters at the bottom of the drawing such as Cassini were not as light struck when I started this sketch as they appear here since I sketched top to bottom. It took about 75 minutes to complete the basic rendering and I spent an additional 15 minutes cleaning smudges and erasing mistakes that were obvious to me.

Mare Serenitatis is the southeastern illuminated region of the sketch. Over to the terminator on the western side of the view are the two “C” shaped craters Autolycus and Aristillus. Among the shadows in the middle of the sketch is crater Theaetetus and directly below the last long shadow is part of crater Cassini and some of the peaks of the lunar Alps.

I had some fun with this one.

See Rükl- Atlas of the Moon Plates 12 and 13

Sketching:

For this sketch I used: Black Canson sketching paper, 9”x 12”, White and black Conte’ pencils, a blending stump, plastic eraser. After scanning, contrast was increased (+1) using the scanner.

Telescope: 10 inch f/5.7 Dobsonian and 9mm eyepiece 161x
Date: 4-21-2010, 2:00 – 3:15 UT
Temperature: 15° C (49° F)
clear, calm
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Co-longitude: 355°
Lunation: 6.6 days
Illumination: 42.7 %

Observing Location:
+41°37′ +87° 47′
Oak Forest, Il.

Frank McCabe

Mars Pastel Sketch – February 5, 2010

Mars – February 5, 2010
Sketch and Details by Mark Seibold

Technical information regarding the sketch:

At my current residence of Sandy Oregon in the home driveway; 30 miles east of Portland Oregon:

After Observing Mars through my Nexstar 5i and 10.1″ f/4.5 Coulter Odyssey Dobsonian telescope on two evenings of February 5th and 6th 2010, I produced this large 22″ X 30″ pastel impression with artists conceptual Martian landscape showing a dust storm over the polar cap region as science news reported today. The pastel chalks were applied to black Stonehenge 100% cotton cold pressed pastel paper. Through broken clouds over two nights, I eventually rendered most of the prominent albedo features on the martian surface; the left hemisphere edge exhibited a definite blue limb haze along most of the discs edge on the evening of February 5th at approximately 7 UT ~ 9 UT.