Moon – Page 26 – Astronomy Sketch of the Day

Daylight Moon

Daylight Moon
Move mouse over image to view uncolorized version.

Dear Asod,

I send you here my sketch made of the Moon in daylight. on 18th December everybody was after Lovejoy, but I had no chance to observe it, as from my observing place I am unable to block out the Sun. However, the Moon was up and visible until around UT 10:00, so I decided to go for it.
I observed it with 26x, without any filters (I had tried with neutral filter, but it did not help, so I took it out).

Date: 18th December 2011, UT: 9:00-10:00
Equipment used: 130/650 SW
Media: Graphite pencil on white paper
Location: Budapest, Hungary

dr. Hannák Judit

Landscape on the Lunar Horizon

This landscape place of the moon limb is about 70-80 km spanned zone and located near the north pole of the moon. I observed/sketched this view for 3 hours at X 690 POWER with a 8 inch refractor on a clear night on NOV. 13, 2011 at backyard my house in South KOREA. (Moon age = 18 day)

I guess this sketched place is maybe Carpenter or Anaximander Crater.

I’m glad to join with you.

Ancient Thebit and Rupes Recta

Ancient Thebit, Rupes Recta, Thebit, Birt, Promontorium Taenarium
Move mouse over image to view labels.

Object Name: Ancient Thebit, Rupes Recta, Thebit, Birt, Promontorium Taenarium
Object Type: Lunar crater, lunar graben, lunar dorsum.
Location: York, UK
Date: 3rd December 2011
Media: graphite pencil, white paper

The straight wall, or Rupes Recta, is the best example of a simple fault on the moon, and visible even with a small scope. It’s 300m high and 114km long. It lies radial to the Mare Imbrium impact basin, in line with a lot of nearby sculpture from that event, but that is probably just coincidental. It also lies in line with the edge of the Mare Nubium basin and cuts across the floor of an ancient crater lying across the edge of that basin, known as Ancient Thebit, whose eastern edge marks the edge of Mare Nubium and western edge is marked by wrinkle ridges in the mare. Rupes Recta marks where the edge of Mare Nubium would have been if Ancient Thebit had never formed. The sequence of events is therefore likely to have been:

1. Nubium impact occurs, forming Nubium basin (4.55-3.92 billion years ago).

2. Ancient Thebit impactor hits edge of Nubium Basin.

3. Nubium basin floods with lava forming Mare Nubium (approx 3.3 billion years ago according to crater counts), flooding Ancient Thebit.

4. Nubium basin slumps in the centre, forming Rupes Recta along its former edge.

I failed to see Rima Birt, a lava rille that travels from a dome on the northern border of ancient Thebit to crater Birt. However, seeing was not good. I did nonetheless make out the dome that marks its origin, which I had not seen before.

The Pleiades and the Moon

Object: The Pleiades (M45) and the moon
Object type: Open cluster/moon
Location: Montreal, Canada
Date: December 8th, 2011
Media: White pastel on black paper, digital retouch

I marked the date in my agenda: The beautiful Pleiades and an almost full moon side by side. Something not to be missed. And the conditions were good: no clouds and a comfortable 3°C.

My 15 X 70 binoculars were the perfect instrument for this observation as the two objects could fit within two field of view. A sketch had to be done…

Jean Barbeau

Venus and Two-Day Moon

Moon Venus conjunction 2011-11-27 – 5 PM Local Time

Object Name (Moon, Venus)
Object Type (conjunction)
Location (Rocbaron Provence France)
Date (2011-11-27 5PM Local Time)
Media (graphite pencil and watercolour)
Material (Newton telescope 114/500 25x for the moon and naked eyes)

I climbed during half an hour with a light telescope on my back to reach the St Sauveur Mountain close to Rocbaron. This is a fantastic position. I can see the Med from the Golden Islands Porqueroles and Port-Cros to the Toulon surroundings and the sunset.

After sketching the landscape with a graphite pencil, I place the Moon and Venus. Then through my telescope I sketched the new born moon.

The home work was to colour the sketch and adds Venus and the moon reduced to the correct size on my digital watercolour.

The full adventure is described on a small youtube animation: http://youtu.be/d8kSZefO7w0

Thanks to you all

Michel Deconinck
Téléphone : 00 33 (0)4 89 36 54 03
GSM/portable : 00 33 (0)6 99 42 42 47
email : trialogmdc@yahoo.fr
Web : http://www.aquarellia.com

A Faint Arc of Light

Aloha,

I got up at 3:50 am this morning – crystal clear skies & not too cold, maybe 50 degrees, out on my deck with my 7×50 binocular. At that time the moon looked like a 25% crescent with the remaining body visible. At 4:10 it was so lovely, just a faint SW arc of light still on the moon & the shadow a dark dusty orange. The sky became dark enough to see stars around the moon – an eerie sight. At ~4:45 the eclipse appeared complete but clouds were coming in & it was even difficult to see the outline but I could still make out nearby stars. The moon just disappeared in totality and was difficult to locate without binocular aid.

Object: Lunar Eclipse
Equipment: 7X50 Nikon Action Extreme Binocular
Date: 12/10/11 @ 4:10 am
Location: Maui, Hawaii
Media: Black art paper, pastels & colored pencils

Eclipsed Moon

Hi!
This is my sketch of the Lunar Eclipse. In Poland the initial phase and the main phase of the eclipse was impossible to observe. But we could watch the final phase of the eclipse.
This sketch shows the Moon coming out from the shadow of the Earth.

Objects: Moon – Lunar Eclipse
Date: December 10, 2011
Time: About 16:25 – 16:35 (4:25 – 4:35 PM)
Place: Nowy Sącz, Poland
Equipment: Binoculars Bresser 10×50
Conditions: faint fog, light pollution.
Technique: Pastels on navy blue art paper. Correction and tooling with GIMP2
Author: Aleksander Cieśla (Wimmer)

Clouds Spoiled the Occultation

Hi.
Yesterday (October 31st) I went to see interesting occultation. The star Xi Sagittarii was to be obscured by the Moon. Unfortunately, five minutes before the occultation the clouds came. What a bad luck.
So I have only a sketch of the Moon and Xi Sgr in short distance from each other 🙁

Object: Moon & Xi Sagittarii
Date: October 31st, 2011
Time: About 18:25 (6:25 PM)
Place: Nowy Sącz, Poland
Equipment: Binoculars Bresser 10×50
Technique: White pastels on black art paper. Tooling, levels, color, light in GIMP2
Author: Aleksander Cieśla (Wimmer)

Chevallier Crater

This 35-40 km diameter crater is iocated between Mare Crisium and North pole of moon.

I observed it at X300- X500 using a 8 inch refractor. Sketch on a white paper with pencils on NOV. 11th, 2011 (MOON age=16 day )

Craters Stöfler and Faraday

One could sketch the plethora of craters in the southern highlands and not finish them for many years. The craters for sketching chosen here are ones I have not sketched before but were standouts on this evening. The finest sketch I have ever seen of this region was made back in January of 2007 by Sally Russell and can be seen at Astronomy Sketch of the Day for March 27, 2007.

The central large crater that anchors this sketch is Pre-Nectarian period Stöfler a 129 kilometer walled plain with a buried central peak. Piled on top of it to the southeast are a sequence of craters decreasing in size and including one without a name, then Faraday ( 71 km.), Stöfler P ( 34 km.) and Faraday C ( 30 km.). North of Stöfler most of the rim of crater Fernelius (66 km.) was visible but all of the floor was in darkness.

I was forced to work quickly as clouds were rolling in at about the time I was just beyond mid-sketch.

Equipment and Sketching:

Telescope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian on a drive platform 4mm ortho eyepiece 361x

For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper 9″x 12″, white and black Conte’ pastel pencils and blending stumps, white Pearl eraser.

Date: 11-2 to 11-3-2011 23:30-00:40 UT
Temperature: 17° C (63° F)
Partly cloudy soon becoming mostly cloudy, high humidity 70%
Waxing gibbous phase
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Transparency: 6/10
Colongitude: 356.6 °
Lunation: 7.2 days
Illumination: 53.2 %

Frank McCabe