Category: News

If you are on Facebook, you can now subscribe to Astronomy Sketch of the Day updates at: https://www.facebook.com/asod.info. We hope to see you there!

Jeremy

We have some exciting news for our viewers who read Persian. Kambiz Khaleghi, an amateur astronomer from Iran, has been working hard to translate ASOD. The Persian-language site can now be found at www.IranASOD.com. We hope the site helps generate further interest and participation from the global astronomical sketching community.

Jeremy Perez
for Astronomy Sketch of the Day

Hi everyone,

You may have noticed that the site was down for about a day and a half this week. It appears that some hacked code had been added to generate spam on some of the pages. The web hosting provider noticed it and shut the site down until we cleared things out. Communicating with tech support to understand the problem was a bit on the slow side, but now that this is fixed, we’re back up and running.

However, this brings up another topic, and I am interested in your feedback. In order to save on web hosting costs, I am considering moving ASOD to the hosting provider I currently use for The Belt of Venus. This would save about $100/year and would put ASOD on a server with excellent service and very fast technical support. You would still direct your browser to ‘www.asod.info’, however, once the site loads, your browser’s address bar would re-load to say either ‘asod.perezmedia.net’ or ‘perezmedia.net/asod’. I’m interested in your feedback, and if anyone has any concerns with this approach. I’m glad to answer any questions I can and look forward to your thoughts.

Thanks for the ongoing support with sketch submissions, comments, and visits!

Jeremy Perez
for ASOD

Thanks to Alexander Massey of The Astronomical Society of New South Wales for submitting the following invitation to our contributors and visitors:

---

Scott Mellish was a long time and valued member of the Astronomical Society of NSW. His knowledge of amateur astronomy and dedication to observation and sketching was unrivaled within the society and much admired by all those who knew him.

In honour of his memory, the ASNSW is proud to announce the inaugural Scott Mellish Amateur Sketching or Drawing Competition. This competition will be held annually at the South Pacific Star Party and aims to promote the art of Sketching and Drawing within the world-wide amateur astronomical community.

The competition is open to any member of an amateur astronomical society throughout the world and will be judged by popular vote during the star party on the 21st April 2012. Winners will be announced on the day.

Please visit The Scott Mellish Sketching or Drawing Competition to read further and to download the rules, entry form and entry template.

Dear visitors,

We were recently contacted by Dr. Larry Krumenaker, publisher of The Classroom Astronomer magazine. Dr. Krumenaker wanted to see if one of our contributors would be interested in writing an article for the magazine about how to create astronomical sketches. Their audience consists of teachers from elementary to college, formal and informal educators, with most at the high school or non-major undergraduate level. For this audience, brighter objects that are within the grasp of new observers would be ideal (Moon, planets, bright DSOs). This would not be a paid article; however, the contributor will receive a copy of the magazine in which the article appears.

The magazine’s website can be found here: The Classroom Astronomer

The magazine’s “Information for Writers” page can be found here: Write for The Classroom Astronomer

If you are interested in contributing, please contact Dr. Larry Krumenaker at classroomastronomer [at] toteachthestars [dot] net for further information.

Jeremy Perez
For the Astronomy Sketch of the Day

The Galleries have been updated and the missing thumbnails should now be in place. The monthly galleries will also show a full month on a single page. If you haven’t browsed the gallery before, why not take a look? We think it’s an enjoyable way to sample some of the excellent work that’s been submitted.

Jeremy Perez for ASOD

Welcome to our new look! We hope you like it.

We have just finished an upgrade that will hopefully provide better protection from attack by hackers and spammers. This also seemed like the perfect opportunity to update the look of the site. It is an honor to be able to feature sketches from observers around the world. We want to present those sketches in the best possible way. We hope that the new design will draw better attention to the images by subduing the surrounding tone and color, and reducing the visual prominence of some of the supporting text so that the sketch is accentuated.

Be sure to use the search feature and take a look at the categories or monthly archives. These pages have been formatted to display the results as a thumbnail gallery. We hope this will make it even more enticing to explore the wealth of sketches we’ve had the pleasure of hosting.

Navigation will also be a bit more accessible along the right sidebar. In the coming days and weeks we plan to introduce some gradual adjustments to formatting and navigation so that the site is as useful as we can make it.

Please let us know any comments or problems you encounter with the new site design. Keep those submissions coming!

Jeremy Perez