Conjunction – Astronomy Sketch of the Day

Venus and Mercury After Sunset, release 2

Venus, Mercury and Meteor - 10 January 2015 — Venus, Mercury and Meteor – 10 January 2015

Venus, Mercury - 10 January 2015 — Venus, Mercury – 10 January 2015

Object Name (Venus and Mercury)
Object Type (Plante conjunction and meteor)
Location (Artignosc-sur-Verdon France)
Date (Jan 10th 2015)
Media (watercolor, white paper, inverted after scan)

January the 10th the two inner planets of our solar system are very close. Following the nice pastel sketch made by Frank Jan 6th (ASOD Feb 2nd) I will take the opportunity to compare its view with this I made 4 days later.
While my watercolor session, a probable Quadrantide meteor produce a brilliant flash.

The two planets are easily seen in the field of my UWA EP.

Clear sky to you all !

Michel Deconinck

http://astro.aquarellia.com

Venus-Uranus-Mars—Two Conjunctions

Conjunctions of Venus, Mars and Uranus - 11 March 2015 — Conjunctions of Venus, Mars and Uranus – 11 March 2015

Object Name (Venus, Mars, Uranus)
Object Type (Planet conjunctions)
Location (Artignosc-sur-Verdon – Provence, France)
Date (11/03/2015)
Media (graphite pencil, watercolour pencils, white watercolour paper, Paint.net)

I always have issue to find Uranus, without GoTo, it’s not so easy…and I don’t like facility…
Thinks are moving in our planet system. It’s why “planetos” in Greek means “vagabond”.
So I use the opportunity of this double conjunction just a week from each other to find Uranus and its so nice colour.
The Venus-Uranus separation was 5.2’ Venus was 10’000 more brilliant than Uranus, while the separation between Mars and Uranus, one week later was 16.25’
The faint K star between Mars and Uranus is HIP 4325 mag=9.5, so no Uranus satellites were visible with my material.

I sketch the two fields on white watercolour paper with inverted method using a chromatic wheel, orange for Venus, blue for Mars and crimson red for Uranus then I just have to invert the two sketches after scanning. The deal is to manage the colour values in inverted mode.

Clear sky to you all, and for some of you I wish you a nice eclipse on Mart 20.

Michel Deconinck Aquarellia – Astronomie

Planetary Alignment – Mercury, Venus, Mars

Mercury, Venus, Mars - 9 January 2015 — Mercury, Venus, Mars – 9 January 2015

Object Name: Mercury, Venus and Mars

Object Type: Planet

Date: 1/9/2015

Location: A Coruña, Galicia. Spain.

Media: drawing on picture, edited and enhanced with Gimp

Nikon binoculars 15×70 IF HP

SeeIng: 2/5. Some clouds

This drawing shows the planetary alignment in these days. As the picture taken with the phone was very bad, I decided to draw a picture that showed the beauty of the image.
The brightness of Venus is seen against the weaker yellow Mercury. The red glow of Mars came a bit latter and sharing view with it, the star Iota Aquarii showed its pale white light.

Venus and Mercury in Same FOV

I observed Venus & Mercury together in the same FOV on January 10, 2015 from 14:30 to 16:00 hr MST here in Tucson, Arizona USA with a Celestron Nexstar 11 f10 GPS stopped down to 4.5″, a 2″ diagonal and a 2″ University Optics 32mm Ultra Wide eyepiece (AFOV 80 deg). The field of view was 0.95 and Venus & Mercury fit into the same FOV comfortably. Venus was a bright, white, full orb and Mercury appeared as a very small disk with a pinkish – white color. It appeared that 3 Mercurys could fit across the disk of Venus. Seeing was very good around 3:15 PM so centered on Mercury and increased the power to 259X using a Meade Ultra Wide 8.8mm AFO 84 deg eyepiece. Mercury showed a nice quarter phase with a nice pale pink disk; moving over to Venus and the full phase, white disk showed very well. The color sketch was done using Paint.net application to record the observation.

Conjunction Venus, Mars and Moon

Object Name: Venus, Mars and moon
Object Type: Conjunction
Location: Mystków, Poland
Date 20.02.2015, ~17:00 UT
Media: graphite pencil, white paper, PhotoFiltre 7

Hello everyone.
This is my latest sketch conjunction of Venus and Mars. The planet was near the moon, one day after the new moon. You can see the moon was light gray. When sketching, the sky was clear, visibility was very good, light wind was blowing.

Conjunction of Venus and Mercury – 18 January 2015

Living in Eastbourne, I am lucky enough to have the famous cliffs at the end of the South Downs close by; the panoramic views they afford are ideal for watching sunrises and sunsets, which are frequently rendered even more beautiful by dramatic coastal clouds. On Sunday 18th January I was driving back from a visit to the beach further east at Normans Bay, when I noticed a break opening up in the blanket of cloud to the west. Instead of heading home I made the short detour up to Beachy Head, where I was treated to this wonderfully picturesque celestial scene.

Best regards and clear skies, Oli

18/01/15 18:45 UT
Soft pastels on Rembrandt pastel paper with acrylic paint for Venus

Conjunción Lovejoy y M79

Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy in conjunction with M79, a globular star cluster in the constellation Lepus -December 29, 2014

Object Name C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy and M79
Object Type Comet and Globular cluster
Location Granadero Baigorria, Santa Fe, Argentina
Date 29/12/14
Media I use pencil, paper, and Gimp to invert colour

Conjunción del cometa Lovejoy con el cúmulo globular M79, en la constelación de la liebre.
El equipo con el cual se realizo la observación es un telescopio reflector sw 150/750 con un ocular de 25.
Podemos notar un bonito “triángulo ” entre el Cometa, m79 y la estrella HIP 25045 A. Se pudo observar un color con tintes verdosos hacia el centro del cometa. No se pudo observar coma

Google translate:
Comet Lovejoy conjunction with the globular cluster M79 in the constellation of the hare.
The equipment with which the observation was performed is a reflecting telescope with an eyepiece 150/750 sw 25.
We can notice a nice “triangle” between the Comet, m79 and the star HIP 25045 A. It was observed color with greenish tints to the center of the comet. Could be observed comma

Smiling Christmas Eve Moon & Mars

The conjunction of the crescent Moon and Planet Mars - December 24, 2014 — The conjunction of the crescent Moon and Planet Mars – December 24, 2014

Aloha,

Every Christmas Eve, my family treks to the top of Haleakala to feel the chill and look for Santa’s Sleigh. This year we went to the 10,000 el to find it a cold 36*, wet, and blowing rain. After a few minutes we jumped back into the car a bit disappointed, to descend the mountain. Right before the park exit the sky had mostly cleared and the winds calmed. There we hiked under the “smiling” Hawaiian crescent. Chilled cheeks and fingers, it was perhaps one of the nicest Christmas Eves ever. This sketch was drawn from my memory of the evening.

In the winter months the path of the Moon is more parallel with the horizon giving the lunar crescent in Hawaii a bowl or smile like appearance when lit from the already set sun. Ancient Hawaiian’s called this the “wet moon” because it looks like a bowl that could be filled up with rain. As the winter moves into Spring & Summer the crescent shifts to “pour” water onto the land, empties and becomes a “dry moon” once more. Wet moons occur routinely in the tropics where the sun and moon rise and set nearly vertically.

3.5 day old Crescent Moon & Mars
12/24/14 1930 HST
Haleakala National Park, Hosmers Grove
Black Canson paper with colored Conte’ Crayon and watercolor pencils

Cindy (Thia) Krach

Webmaster’s note: Wishing all astrosketchers a Very Happy New Year and looking forward to another year hosting all your wonderful observational sketches!

Richard Handy
Jeremy Perez

Brilliant Saturn at the Dark Lunar Limb

A conjunction of the Moon and the planet Saturn - September 27, 2014 — A conjunction of the Moon and the planet Saturn – September 27, 2014

Aloha!

I had plans to go to the summit of Haleakala to observe the occultation of Saturn by the Moon, but clouds and wind kept me closer to home. I was delighted when a patch of sky opened up and I could observe the wonderful phenomenon from home.

As I was observing Saturn get closer to our Moon I was struck by how small it appeared in comparison, appearing the size of some of the smaller lunar craters. I began sketching in the details of the Moon and noticed a few stars I wanted to include. I needed to do some erasures because one of the stars was occulted ~15 minutes before Saturn, an unexpected treat. Once Saturn made it to the limb I could not clearly time the initial ingress as conditions began to deteriorate. It was however brilliantly lit in comparison to the dark lunar limb. I noted time as 19:41:36 HAST when all evidence of Saturn disappeared. My sketch is as Saturn had partially slipped past the limb. I was unable to view egress as the Moon had slipped behind clouds by this time.

Occultation of Saturn by the Moon
Maui, Hawaii
4,000el
SV102ED 79x
9/27/14
Black paper, white & black charcoal
Photoscape to clean up sketch

Cindy (Thia) Krach

Comet Jacques & Struve 3053

Comet C/2014 E2 (Jacques) in conjunction with Struve 3053 - August 24, 2014 — Comet C/2014 E2 (Jacques) in conjunction with Struve 3053 – August 24, 2014

I found this comet in Cassiopeia the other night (August 24) near the colourful double star Struve 3053 and thought it made a nice composition. As I observed over the course of an hour I was surprised to see how quickly the comet moved against the background stars from the position I first sketched it at 11:15 local time to the position indicated by the X at about 12:10. The observations were made with a 120mm F/8.3 refractor at 42x in a 68 degree eyepiece from my Orleans, Ontario backyard.