Media Combinations – Page 34 – Astronomy Sketch of the Day

Solar Cornucopia

Solar Observation – November 23, 2007
PCW Memorial Observatory
By Erika Rix

Well the new active region doesn’t appear to have a designation yet (or even if it will), but I was able to make it outside for a few hours to observe. It was only scattered clouds during the observation and a little windy and chilly. But with the Sun at a very low altitude of approximately 27 degrees, it was still a struggle against time to observe in both h-alpha and white light before the trees obscured by view.

Paul opened up the observatory for me and by the time I got my scopes switched on the LXD, he was coming in with a cup of hot tea for me and Riser was curled up in a ball at my feet on his blanket.

The first thing I noticed in the Maxscope was a small bright plage area almost dead center in the solar disk. Bumping up the magnification, I found that it was actually broken off into two sections with fainter “arms” reaching to the east and west of it. There were hints of two darkened spots on either side of it, but I couldn’t confirm it in that bandwidth.

There were three areas of prominences on the Eastern limb, two that are included in the close-up sketches. On the western limb, there were just a few very tiny areas that looked like little spikes.

Just north of the prominence at approximately 90 degrees was a bright patch of plage, almost oblong with the western edge outlined a slightly darker hue. A very thin line of filament branched inward from the limb just north of the 90 degree mark, but could not see it extend outward off the limb against the dark background.

The prominence on the 140 degree mark had a fairly broad sectioned filament running north to south about 15 degrees inside the limb. It was broken into three obvious sections as well as a few very thin lines of filament in the same area.

After a brief few moments enjoying the countryside view from the drop down southern wall of the observatory, I grabbed my clipboard, a few pencils, my empty cup of tea and marched off to the house in my slippers and knitted hat, with Riser following close behind.

The ETX is stored in the house for a few reasons. The observatory isn’t quite big enough to house all the scopes plus it’s easy access for white light viewing to just drag the already set up scope outside from the living room.

Within minutes, I was sat behind the ETX with my sketchpad on my knee, recording what the new active region looked like in white light. There were two dominant smaller spots with an additional fainter spot just off of the larger one. Then, reaching out to the other side of the spots were long thin faint lines. I didn’t notice faculae, but I imagine the dark lines may have been the contrast of border from faculae.

The views were slightly softened today, so it was difficult to view granulation, but limb darkening was very noticeable.

h-alpha sketch media: black Strathmore Artagain paper, white Conte’ and Prang pencils, white Conte’ crayon for disk surface

white light media: copy paper, number 2 and .5mm mechanical pencils

Walled Plain Neighbors

Hecataeus and Humboldt
By Frank McCabe

At nightfall a beautiful orange waning gibbous moon just a day past full was rising at the early summer sunrise point on the northeastern horizon. The cold atmosphere was nearly saturated with water and ice creating some ice fog and reduced transparency. By 11:30 pm local time the moon was high enough in the sky for a close up view, although the temperature had plunged to well below freezing. The telescope was completely covered with thick hoar frost at the beginning of my sketching interval. I used extended time on this sketch to go indoors to warm my fingers. My sketching target was crater Humboldt and its smaller neighbor Hecataeus. Upper Imbrium era Humboldt is a large floor fractured, walled plain formation, 207 kilometers across. High on the convex floor a line of central peaks and craters can be seen in the foreshortened view. Just as seen in nearby Petavius (not visible in the sketch) dark pyroclastic deposites were visible at the corners of the floor. Floor fractures here and on neighboring Hecataeus to the left could not be detected visually at the eyepiece because of less than ideal seeing. Hecataeus at 130 kilometers in diameter and slightly older than Humboldt was showing off a substantial wall line on its floor just proximal to crater Humboldt.

Sketching:

For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper, 9”x 9”, white and black Conte’pastel pencils and a blending stump. Brightness was slightly decreased after scanning.

Telescope: 10 inch f/5.7 Dobsonian and 6mm eyepiece 241x
Date: 11-25-2007 5:30-7:00 UT
Temperature: -3°C (27°F)
ice fog, calm
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Co longitude: 95.9°
Lunation: 15.3 days
Illumination: 99.4 %

Frank McCabe

Crisium’s Clean Sweep

Mare Crisium
By Richard Handy

The history of the Moon is written by impacts and volcanism. Nowhere is this more apparent than the lunar maria. Mare Crisium, unique among the nearside maria for being completely embayed by the lunar terrae, formed as a result of a 25 km impactor that struck the northeastern quadrant of the Moon some 3.9 to 3.85 Billion years ago. Imagination pales in comparison to the fury of this event. At first impact, all craters that had formed previously in the target area were swept clean of the surface as a deep basin from 10-25 km deep and 500 km in diameter formed. The very surface of the moon, rebounding from the shock of compression, acted like the surface of a pond that was stuck by a pebble, as large undulating seismic waves spread out from the center of the impact, across the basin floor, lifting huge blocks of lunar crust and faulting them in concentric rings at regular intervals. Shock melted material mixed with pulverized regolith called fluidized flow fronts, splayed out radially and nearly horizontal to the surface, creating strange braided landforms and teardrop formations as they tore through crater walls, burying what they did not destroy. A rain of secondary impacts followed, some taking long arching trajectories before impacting several minutes later, hundreds of kilometers away into the distant surrounding terrain. Although the entire basin was created in a few milliseconds, the lavas that cover Mare Crisium itself took hundreds of millions of years to emplace. Impacts that create basins also create deep fractures or faults in the bedrock beneath them. Working in concert with these natural conduits is a mantle that is closer to the surface due to uplift. As a result basaltic lavas found easy access to the surface following these fractures and the Crisium basin gradually became Mare Crisium. Over the course of the next billion years various lava flows erupted onto the mare, covering large portions that had previously been filled in. Nevertheless the mare’s surface is still quite deep in relation to the mean lunar surface, in areas close to 8 km deep according to recent Clementine data. At the western edge of Crisium lies the dramatic butterfly winged rays of Proclus, ejected predominantly lateral to the crater, in two wide 40 degree fans as well as a few subtle down range dustings, the most obvious ray almost bisecting the mare. This is a result of a low angle impact (less than 45 degrees to the surface). As it turns out, Crisium itself is elongated in the east-west direction, perhaps the result of just such a glancing strike.

Here are the sketch details:

Subject: Mare Crisium Rukl: 26, 27, 37, 38
Date: 2-2-07 Started- 6:20 UT End- 8:37 UT (2-3-07)
Seeing: Antoniadi III Weather: Clear
Telescope: 12″ Meade SCT f/10
Binoviewer: W.O. Bino-P with 1.6X Nosepiece.
Eyepieces: W.O. WA 20mm Plossls
Barlow: none
Magnification: 244X
Lunation: 15.1 days Phase: 348.4 deg Illumination: 99.9%
Colongitude: 97.5 deg Lib in Lat.: -1 deg 51 min Lib in Long.: +04 deg 03 min
Sketch medium: White and black Conte’ Crayons on black textured Strathmore paper.
Sketch size: 18″ x 24″.

Salt and Pepper in Cassiopeia

M52 (NGC 7654) Cassiopeia Open Cluster
By Kiminori Ikebe

Difficulty level 1
Date of observation: 2002/01/05 20:30
Transparency/seeing/sky darkness: 2/2/3
Instruments: 32cm Dobsonian with XL21 at 70x
Width of field: 0.9 degree
This cluster is situated west of Cassiopeia’s letter W. It is fairly bright. Although it is a mid-size cluster, stars are well concentrated and individual member stars are bright and beautiful. At 90x it is almost fully resolved. A 7.9-magnitude star in the west stands out. There are many bright stars in the northwest. In the east there is a small condensation from where lines of stars extend outward. Also, a line of stars running from the center to the southeast attracts an observer’s attention. There is a triangular-shaped clump in the southeast somewhat detached from the cluster. There are many faint stars sprinkled in the outlying areas.

Mr. Ikebe’s sketch gallery can be found here: Visual Observation of Deep Sky Objects

Capuanus at the Marsh of Epidemics

Capuanus at the Marsh of Epidemics
By Frank McCabe

At my geographic location during the fall, it is not uncommon to have a sequence of days with fog and mist under heavy cloud cover. At sunset the fog lifted and the sky cleared. It was time to take advantage of this break to observe and sketch.
The sketching target I chose near the terminator is Pre-Imbrian era crater Capuanus. This ancient crater rests on the shore of Palus Epidemiarum. At 58 kilometers in diameter, this is a large crater with extensive rim damage from multiple crater impacts. A narrow gap in the low north wall nearly connects the crater floor to the marsh. Brightly illuminated in the rising sun is the high western wall which towers at 2.5 kilometers above the crater floor. The basaltic lava on the floor of the crater appeared mostly dark. Two of the domes or dome-like rises could be detected on the southern crater floor. These volcanoes were active during the age of prokaryotic life here on earth 3.5 billion years ago. Ridges extending from the west of the crater, line up nicely with the margins of both mare Nubium and mare Humorum. Perhaps these are remains of a basin rim which was part of one of these seas.Across the floor of Palus Epidemiarum a wide segment of western Rima Hesiodus could be seen approaching the northern most of these ridge reminants. Two hours after I began sketching clouds moved in and closed my window on the moon.

Sketching:

For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper, 9”x12”, white and black Conte’pastel pencils and a blending stump. Brightness was slightly decreased after scanning.

Telescope: 10 inch f/5.7 Dobsonian and 4mm eyepiece 362x
Date: 11-20-2007 0:05-1:40 UT
Temperature: 14°C (58°F)
fog, calm
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Co longitude: 33°
Lunation: 10 days
Illumination: 72.2 %

Frank McCabe

Shadowplay on the Floor of Ancient Thebit

The Straight Wall, Birt, and Thebit on the floor of ‘Ancient Thebit’
By Richard Handy

What struck me immediately was the scimitar shaped shadow of the Straight Wall. I had observed the Wall on many past ocassions and I guess I had never seen it so close to the terminator. The long shadow cast by the fault (the “absolute best example of a lunar fault” according to Chuck Wood) amply displayed the fact that Ancient Thebit must have subsided on it’s western half into the Nubium basin. Ancient Thebit is the large circular partial rim flooded with mare lavas which dominates the center of the sketch. It is not to be confused by the snowman shaped 57 km Upper Imbrium crater Thebit, which lies within it along with Birt
and the Straight Wall. I’m not totally sure about my interpretation, but I believe that Rima Birt is demarcated by the shadow line just immediately above Birt, the small double crater on the left of the Straight Wall. The crater at the lower right is Purbach with its scattering of low peaks and small craters on an otherwise lava flooded floor.

Here are the sketch details:

Subject: Rupes Recta, Birt, Thebit on the floor of “Ancient Thebit”.
Date: 8-31-06 Start time- 3:40 UT Ending time- 4:27 UT
Lunation: 8.31 days Phase 88.1 deg Colongitude: 8.6 deg
Libration in Latitude: +6 deg 48 min Libration in Longitude: -6 deg 43 min
Telescope: 12″ Meade SCT f/10
Binoviewer: W.O. Bino-P with 1.6X Nosepiece
Eyepieces: 20mm W.O. Plossls
Magnification: 244X
Sketch medium: White and black Conte’ Crayon on black Strathmore Artagain paper.
Sketch size: 9″ x 12″

Arm of the Eastern Veil

Eastern Veil Nebula – NGC 6992 and NGC 6995
By Kiminori Ikebe

Lying some 1400 light years away in the constellation Cygnus is the beautiful supernova remnant known as the Veil Nebula or Cygnus Loop. When the supernova first lit up the sky thousands of years ago, it likely shone with the brilliance of a crescent moon (magnitude -8). The eastern portion of this broken circle of nebulosity is catalogued as NGC 6992 and NGC 6995. The full area of the Veil Nebula spans more than 3 degrees of the sky. In order to capture much of the eastern arm, Mr. Ikebe broke it down into the two sketches shown above.

(Source: APOD}

Mr. Ikebe’s notes about this nebula:

A magnificent view. The nebulosity in the shape of an arch in which bright and dark areas entwine in a complex manner. It is not possible to describe in words. It is difficult to draw it accurately and this sketch only shows how this nebula is perceived. The Veil Nebula is one of the most complex but clearest objects in the northern sky. The nebulosity from NGC 6992 to NGC 6995 is the brightest part of the Veil Nebula and even 10×42 binoculars reveal an arch-shaped nebulosity clearly.

(Re: NGC 6995) The complex area on the southern end of the arch in the east. The tip of the nebulosity divides into several branches looking like a human hand trying to grasp something. Off the tips of the fingers there are two faint areas, which may be IC 1340.

Equipment used: 32 cm Dobsonian at 70X
Sketch Media: Black paper, white paint (for stars), white watercolor pencil, and tissue paper. A Japanese language discussion of Mr. Ikebe’s sketching technique with photos can be found here: How to Make a Sketch. Translating the page using Google Language Tools can help with some of the text.

A Trio of Isolated Prominences

Solar Prominences
By Erika Rix

Seeing today was terrible and I tried my best to hang in there for a few good moments to see anything on the other half of the Sun. There was a small prominence, but I just wasn’t able to catch the fainter large one that others were able to see.

I did have some nice views by playing with the Etalon. There were some hairline filaments, or perhaps just darkened lines, scattered about on the disk. And three areas of proms on the eastern half of the Sun can be shown in the sketch.

Sketch done on black Strathmore Artagain paper with Conte’ and Prang white pencils. The graphic on the upper right is from Les’ Tilting Sun program. Some areas blended slightly with fingertip.

Crater Burg and the Lake of Death

Crater Burg and Lacus Mortis

By Frank McCabe

Crater Burg is a young, sharp rimmed crater formed less than 900,000 years ago and can be seen resting at the east center of the ancient Lake of Death or Lacus Mortis. This 40 km. crater with its central peak and well defined ejecta apron is in stark contrast to the old pre-Imbrium crater, Lacus Mortis which embraces it. Interesting terracing can be seen clearly in the low sunlight.
The Lake of Death crater is a large one as craters go, nearly 160 km. in diameter. Its features include rilles across the floor, a few of which are fairly long. Perhaps these floor fractures are from doming of the floor as some lava entered from below. The central bulge of this crater can be seen in grazing sunlight much like crater Petavius. Ridges emanating from the northwest and southwest outer walls of Burg can be seen crossing the lake floor all the way to the rim of the Lake of Death. Just to the west of the south ridge of Burg is a straight scarp that continues as a rille as it nears the lake center. It appears much like Rupes Recta. The east face is brightly illuminated by the setting sun near the southern wall of the lake and it is much taller than the more famous straight wall.
Further west on the lava floor is Rima Burg a 100km. long slump in the floor. It is nearly in line with a shadowed valley seen in the hills beyond the boundaries of Lacus Mortis.
Other craters to the east of Burg are superimposed on the old destroyed rim of Lacus Mortis. They are Plana (45 km.) with a central peak sticking up above the lava flooded flat floor and Mason (43 km.) the other crater to the north which is nearly a twin without the central mountain.

Sketching:

For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper, 9”x12”, white and black Conte’pastel pencils and a blending stump. Brightness was slightly decreased after scanning.

Telescope: 18 inch f/5 Dobsonian and 9mm eyepiece 222x
Date: 10-30-2007 6:05-7:00 UT
Temperature: 11°C (52°F)
Clear, calm
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Co longitude: 142.8°
Lunation: 19.3 days
Illumination: 75.1 %

Frank McCabe

Triangulum’s Spectacular Spiral

M33 and HII Regions

By Kiminori Ikebe

From the English translation at Mr. Ikebe’s website:

M33 (NGC 598) Triangulum Galaxy – Difficulty Level: 2/5
NGC 588 Tri Star Cloud – Level: 5/5
NGC 592 Tri Diffuse nebula – Level: 4/5
NGC 595 Tri Diffuse nebula – Level: 4/5
NGC 604 Tri Diffuse nebula – Level: 3/5
Date of observation: 1998/11/14 21:55
Observing site: Makinoto
Transparency: 3/5
Seeing: 4/5
Sky darkness: 4/5
Instruments: 32cm Dobsonian and Pentax XL14
Magnification: 110x
Width of field: 0.6 degreeThis is a galaxy with a dynamic spiral arm.
The haze around the core is very faint and requires dark adaptation to see its extent. Once your eye is fully adapted, you will be surprised how extensive the haze is. NGC 604 is bright and located in the northeast of this galaxy. If you spend enough time, you will be able to detect this galaxy’s magnificent spiral structures as well as star clusters and nebulae such as NGC 588, NGC 592, and NGC 595 within the galaxy. The core is compact and elongated. At its center lies a small shining nucleus. There are two arms visible, one in the south and the other in the north; both are spiraled counter-clock-wise. The southern arm is divided into three regions. The northern arm is thin and broken off at places while embedded in haze. Other regions of the galaxy appear as faint haze.

NGC 604: Almost circular and small, but as bright as the center of M33.
NGC 595: A small faint object located near where the northern arm starts. The center of this object appears stellar surrounded by fuzzy nebulosity.
NGC 592: This object looks like a faint small spot.
NGC 588: It is located far from the center of M33 and easily missed. It is a much smaller spot than NGC 592.

Mr. Ikebe uses white pencil and “poster color” on black drawing paper. An extensive collection of his sketches can be found on the English section of his website. A larger collection can be found at the Japanese language site.