Eratosthenes Crater and the Montes Apennius
Sketch and Details by Aleksander Cieśla
Eratosthenes crater and the Apennines Mountains on the Moon’s surface.
Object: Moon – Eratosthenes Crater
Scope: Schmidt-Cassegrain 5” + Speers-Waler 7,4mm + barlow 1,6x
Filter: Moon&SkyGlow
Place: Poland, Wroclaw – near city center
Weather: Good. Seeing 7/10. Light Pollution.
Date: 6-7 January 2009
Technique: White pastel crayons on black paper
Tooling: N/A
Last Conjunction of 2008, December 31st
Sketch and Details by Giorgio Bonacorsi
Hi Astronomy Sketchers! All o.k.? I’m o.k.,before great Christmas dinner.The weather was bad for two week,i’m depressed,i don’t have chance to observe last conjunction of 2008. But the 31 december…..the miracle! The sky was clear and blue, i observe the Moon at 4,00 p.m. with my bino 10×50 and i see the bright point of Venus ! Wonderfull vision! I take my 80mm refractor and made Moon’s sketch at 47x, before i made one sketch of Venus with orange filter. I can see,in very low position, Jupiter and Mercury and made that panoramic sketch with my eyes, just in time. The clouds cover the sky in few secods and stay today up my head!
Thankyou for all.I hope like you my sketch.
At next,Giorgio Bonacorsi.
Site:Pergola,Marche Region,Center Italy,31 December 2008
Time:5,30 p.m.
Instrument:naked eyes
Seeing:Good
Temperature:Cold,humidity.
Lunar Highlands Crater Sacrobosco
Sketch and Details by Frank McCabe
Crater Sacrobosco is a large (100km.) 4 billion year old Pre-Nectarian crater with a height of 3.5 kilometers from floor to highest rim. The crater shows its age with that badly worn rim over most of its circumference. What makes this southern highland crater so eye catching at the eyepiece are the 3 younger craters on the floor of this ancient giant. Clockwise at 11, 2 and 6 o’clock they are Sacrobosco B, A, and C. A is the largest at 17 km. in diameter and C is the smallest at 13 km. Much of the illuminated floor of Sacrobosco is smooth in appearance except where interrupted by a long meandering line of what look like low irregular hills from the center to the north rim (bottom in the sketch).
Many of the surrounding craters during this phase of the lunation would make great sketching targets as well.
Sketching:
For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper 9”x 12”, white and black Conte’ pastel pencils and a blending stump. After scanning, Brightness was decreased (-2) using my scanner.
Telescope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian and 6 mm and 4mm eyepieces 241x and 362x
Date: 1-3-2009, 0:05 – 1:20 UT
Temperature: – 6°C (22° F)
clear, calm
Seeing: Antoniadi III, occasionally II
Colongitude 349.9 °
Lunation 6.5 days
Illumination: 34.9 %
Libration: in Lat. -4° 23’, in Long. -7° 59’
Frank McCabe
Venus over Wroclaw, Poland
Sketch and Details by Aleksander Cieśla
Venus shining over Wroclaw city south horizon. Always beautiful.
Sketch information:
Object: Venus
Scope: Schmidt-Cassegrain 5” with Antares Speers-Waler 7,4mm
Filter: Baader Moon & SkyGlow, Meade #58 Green
Place: Poland, Wroclaw – near city center
Weather: Good. Seeing 7/10. Light Pollution.
Date: 29 December 2008.
Technique: Pencil and finger blur
Tooling: GIMP 2
Venus at higher power over Wroclaw, Poland
Sketch and Details by Aleksander Cieśla
and second sketch of Venus in the same time
Sketch information:
Object: Venus
Scope: Schmidt-Cassegrain 5” with Antares Speers-Waler 7,4mm
Filter: Baader Moon & SkyGlow, Meade #58 Green
Place: Poland, Wroclaw – near city center
Weather: Good. Seeing 7/10. Light Pollution.
Date: 29 December 2008.
Technique: White pastel and conte’ crayons on black paper
Tooling: N/A
Lunar Crater Posidonius
Sketch and Details by Dale Holt
Lifted straight from my observing notes of 19th Oct 2008
Tonight my eye was caught by Posidonius, it looked absolutely incredible with its walls illuminated magnificently. It is a walled plain located between Mare Serenitatis and Lacus Somnorium 95 Km in diameter. This is a very interesting and busy feature its floor covered in craterlets, rilles and peaks. To the west there is a double wall which is highly illuminated in the sketch. There is a central crater A, with another tiny crater P just below. The large crater to the upper left is Pos J, to the upper right on the edge of the sketch is Pos P. Of all my lunar sketches to date I think I have enjoyed making this one the most, I’m also pleased with the result I feel it has slight ‘H Percy Wilkins’ look about it.
6″ f9 triplet refractor @ 300x
Sketch made with Conte pastels & Derwent pencil pastels worked with blending stumps & erasers on Black Daler Rowney paper
Dale Holt
Chippingdale observatory
NE Hertfordshire
England
Lunar Crater Inghirami
Sketch and Details by Frank McCabe
This ancient crater is from the Nectarian period and is nearly four billion years old. Crater Inghirami measures 90 km. in diameter and is about 3 km.deep. The ancient floor is cratered, ridged and rubble covered with ejecta launched from the Basin Orientale forming event that followed after the impact making of Inghirami crater.
Sketching:
For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper 9”x 7”, white and black Conte’ pastel pencils and a blending stump. After scanning, Brightness was decreased (-3) using my scanner.
Telescope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian and 9 mm eyepiece 161x
Date: 12-11-2008, 1:10 – 2:20 UT
Temperature: – 2°C (28° F)
clear, calm
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Colongitude 73.1 °
Lunation 13.5 days
Illumination: 97 %
Libration: in Lat. -6° 3’, in Long. -3° 45’
Frank McCabe
The Moon Near First Quarter
Sketch and Details by Frank McCabe
Near Last Quarter
For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper, white and black Conte’ pastel pencils, white Conte’ crayon and a blending stump. Brightness was reduced by a value of -4 (using Microsoft OfficePicture Manager) after scanning.
Telescope: 4.25 inch f/ 5 Dobsonian and 21mm eyepiece 26x
Date: 11-19-2008 12:20-13:30 UT
Temperature: -2° C (28° F)
Partly cloudy, light winds
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Colongitude: 168.7 °
Lunation: 21.6 days
Illumination: 53.9 %
First and Last Quarters
Sketch and Details by Frank McCabe
Combined sketches
These two sketches were made during lunation (number 1062). The first one on the left was sketched just before first quarter (11-6-08) and appeared here November 22, 2008. The second sketch on the right, made just before last quarter and is the sketch above. Both were sketched on separate pieces of paper but were combined electronically on a black background after scanning.
Frank McCabe
Auroral display over Pottsville, Pennslyvania
Sketch and Details by Janis Romer
It was an enormous auroral display that was seen as far south as Arizona. This is what I saw from my balcony. Rather than appearing like the graceful arcs of light you see in photos, the aurora appeared to me as flickering white “blocks” with rays. There were two huge red aurora “clouds” book ending it. I sketched it exactly as I saw it, without any effort to make it conform to common knowledge.
Sketch was made March 12, 1989 using Conte’ pastel pencil on black pastel paper at Pottsville, Pa. Original is 12″ x 24″
Lunar Basin Bailly
Sketch and Details by Frank McCabe
The terminator was approaching the southwestern limb of the moon as the basin Bailly, nicely visible due to favorable libration, came under full illumination. Bailly is large for a crater but small for a ringed basin at 300 kilometers in diameter. In the grazing sunlight the irregular basin floor with numerous craters was evident but no sign of the inner crater ring was visible as can be seen in overhead spacecraft images. The far side inner wall was beautifully illuminated in direct sunlight while features beyond were in total darkness. The depth of this basin is about 6 kilometer below the rim. The two large bright rimmed craters at the south end of Bailly’s floor are first older Bailly B at 65 km. and then younger Bailly A at 38 km. Also notable in this view is a portion of a bright ray of ejecta traceable back to Tycho (not in the drawing) and crossing crater Kircher (75 km.) before reaching the south end of Bailly. The 3 large craters below the Tycho ray are in descending size: Bettinus (73km.), Segner (70km.), and Zucchius (66 km.) which is the youngest of this group of craters.
This was the first evening the moon has been visible from my location since this lunation began. Although a little bit on the chilly side for sketching, it was a pleasure to get out and draw the moon again.
Sketching:
For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper 9”x 7”, white and black Conte’ pastel pencils and a blending stump. After scanning, Brightness was decreased (-2) using the scanner.
Telescope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian and 9 mm eyepiece 161x
Date: 12-11-2008, 5:15 – 7:00 UT
Temperature: – 3°C (26° F)
clear, calm
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Colongitude 73.1 °
Lunation 13.58 days
Illumination: 97 %
Libration: in Lat. -6° 3’, in Long. -3° 45’
Frank McCabe
Three of the many “Deadly Moons”
Sketches by Irish childern, text by Deirdre Kelleghan
imageshttp://picasaweb.google.com/skysketcher/DeadlyMoonsInLibraries#
Here is a link showing a fraction of the moon drawings produced by Irish Children who took part in my Deadly Moons Art / astronomy drawing progam. When I show children the moon in my telescope they often say ” That’s Deadly ” meaning ” That’s cool” or That’s awesome, so when I wrote the program the title wrote itself almost.
The aim of the progam is to inform young children about the many wondeful moons in our solar system including our own facinatng moon. The chidren who produced the works were aged between six and twelve.
In most cases black paper and soft pastels were used. Some groups used crayons or felt pen on white paper. The majority of children were unaware that there are other moons besides our own. The majority of children did not know that there are robots in space.
All of the children enjoyed the program,the use of pastels and the total visual eperience. Every child learned something about moons and all had lots of fun using their imagination and creativity.
Deadly Moons is now available as a download from UNAWE ie Universe Awarness for Young Children. UNAWE is a cornerstone project for International Year of Astronomy 2009
Deirdre Kelleghan
President
Irish Astronomical Society 1937 – 2007
Public Relations Officer IFAS
Oscail do Shuile D’iontas na Cruinne
Open Your Eyes to the Wonder of the Universe
