Here is a small sequence of observations of sunspot 0953 made during 4 days. 0953
turned out to be one of the bigger sunspots of recent time.
Time : see sketches
Scope : ETX 105/1470
Vixen LV Zoom eyepiece at 8mm
Power : 183
Filter : Baader AstroSolar filter.
Seeing : 2/5
Sketch Orientation : N up, W right.
Digital sketch made with a digital tablet and PhotoPaint, based on a raw pencil sketch.
Rony De Laet
http://www.geocities.com/rodelaet, my personal website.
With Mars rising in the early morning hours and slowly increasing in apparent
diameter, Mars observers are already gearing up for this apparition, even though
opposition and closest approach are still six months away.
Along with the opportunity to see the bright Martian South Polar Cap, the North
Polar Hood (the clouds surrounding and hiding the North Polar Cap), famous albedo
features like Syrtis Major, atmospheric clouds, and the giant shield volcano Olympus
Mons (the mightiest volcano in the solar system), observers always have the
potential to see a dust storm develop on Mars.
Although dust storms on Mars can become giant planet-encircling storms that obscure
the surface and cut short the observing season (as happened in 2001), they can also
remain regional, expanding rapidly to cover an area the size of the continental US
and then subsiding. At least two regional events occurred during the 2005
apparition.
The excellent set of Mars sketches by Jeremy Perez on ASOD (8 May 2007) prompted me
to look through my own logbook where I found these two observations made three days
before Jeremy’s drawings. This storm had first been recorded by imagers on 18
October in the area known as Chryse, site of the first Viking landing. By the time
of my first observation, the dust had spread south and was already obscuring
familiar dark albedo features.
In the second observation, Mars had rotated about 40 degrees of longitude, but the
dust had been travelling rapidly west, apparently flowing through the immense fault
(4500km/2800miles) known as Valles Marineris which is associated with the albedo
feature Coprates. The dust later spread over Solis Lacus (the Eye of Mars) and on
towards the south polar region but never turned into a global storm.
This dust storm was bright in unfiltered light but observers wishing to track dust
closely need to use red filters–dust is bright in red light. Wratten #23A and #21
filters are good for small apertures of 8″ (20cm) or less. Those with larger
instruments can use the W25 filter.
The sketches were done using 2B, HB, and 4H graphite pencils, color pencils, and a
blending stump on Strathmore 70 lb. paper. The circle templates are 2 inches. I
like to include the line drawing diagram next to my sketch to label important
features without making the drawing too busy.
A dust storm developing on Mars is a fascinating natural phenomenon to see. Good
luck with this apparition and Happy Mars Observing!
Michael Rosolina
Friars Hill, WV USA
My second (and last) crater so far. Not the most easy to draw, but he was asking for
it. Drawing the moon is a lot more difficult than expected. There are so many
features to pay attention to. I had to stop sketching after an hour, because the
shadows were changing the view.
The image is flipped to match a North down view.
Date : June, 05, 2006
Time : 21.10 UT
Seeing : 2
Scope : ETX 105
EP : Vixen zoom with barlow.
Power : x240
Rony De Laet
http://www.geocities.com/rodelaet, my personal website.
This summer I visited a friend in La Palma (Canaries) and could observe the
wonderful sky that there they have with his telescopes. One of them
dedicated to the solar observation is an apochromatic refractor 120 mm.
F/6,5 (Vixen), it has a filter installed H alpha SolarMax 90 (Coronado). The
day I observed he sun was completely clear, the solar limb was full of
protuberances and brilliant lines that following the magnetic fields. I took
immediately graphite pencil and white paper and began to draw everything
what he saw through the filter. I was very surprised because of the rapid
movement of the needles and arches that seems dramatic veils against the
dark sky. I tried to draw the variation of the forms with the passing of the
time but it was difficult. I will never forget that so magic experience.
You can see the place where I spent a week observing in this web site:
www.astropalma.com . When the drawing was finished I changed it to negative
in the computer and turned it a bit red.
Leonor Ana Hernandez
Here is a lawn chair observation under the freezing Austrian sky at 800m asl. It is
a simple but pleasant sketch of the Bull’s face. I was surprised to notice 3 pairs
of stars. The sky was not perfect dark, so there should be more stars to be picked
out from the cluster. Anyway, scopeless stargazing can be fun ! No cooldown time
needed. My legs and hands cooled down anyway at -9°Celsius. (a solid fuel hand
warmer is a must have)
Location : Bischofshofen, Austria
Date: Dec. 25, 2006 , 20.30UT
Seeing: 4 on a scale of 5, Transparency : 4
Air Temp.: -9° Celsius
Naked eye observation
Rony De Laet
http://www.geocities.com/rodelaet, my personal website.
At one day past full moon old luna was arching it’s way to the high point for the
night when I selected for my sketching target craters along the terminator on the
eastern side of the moon. Six craters larger than 45 kilometers in diameter are
included in this sketch. With only the highest points along the western rim being
touched by sun rays, it is sundown at crater Gauss. With Gauss measuring 177 km.
in diameter it is categorized as a walled plain crater and dates back to the
Nectarian age (3.9-3.8 billion years ago). Southwest of Gauss with the floor in
darkness except for the illuminated central peak we have crater Hahn, a formation
slightly younger than Gauss and smaller at 84 km. To the north of Hahn is a crater
of the same age as Gauss known as Berosus. It measures 77 km in diameter and its
western wall is not as high as that of its partner Hahn. The largest crater on the
western side of the sketch is Geminus at 86 km. It has a low central peak and no
crater rays, although it is the youngest of the craters in the sketch at about 2 billion
years of age. The smaller crater close to Geminus to the east is 47 km. crater
Bernoulli. And finally to the south of Geminus is crater Burckhardt at 57 km. in
diameter with small craters straddling it to the southeast and southwest.
Sketching: Graphite 2H pencils and India ink on
White 8.5”x11” copy paper
Telescope: 10” f/5.7 Dobsonian 6mm eyepiece
Time: 10-8-2006, 5:30-6:30 UT
Colongitude: 101.6°
Weather: clear, calm
Seeing : Antoniadi III
Frank McCabe
The object is “h x Perseii” the double cluster in Persei, through the
telescope it seems to be a pair of cherries hanging on a little tail.
The telescope is a Meade 8″ and observing through a Swan ocular 36 mm
with a big field of vision. I made it with a pencil on a white paper but with some
problems, because the night was very bad, almost covered by clouds moving very
fast, that covered the image through the telescope. It was very hard to sketch in these
conditions, but I was enjoying it very much. This is the original hand made with and
later changed to negative with the computer.
The date: 14 October 2006 in Guadalajara, Spain.
Regards.
Leonor
Living in the UK one has to embrace every opportunity to get the pencils out and
enjoy a little astro sketching as breaks in the cloud cover can be frustratingly
infrequent.
For me this includes capturing Sun spots in white light when the sun shines and
I’m close to my observatory with a few quiet minutes to spare.
I caught the complex Sun Spot group 956 during the afternoon of Saturday 19th May
as it transited the meridian.
Antares 105mm F15 Achromatic refractor
Baader solar film white light filter
Denk binoviewer with Celestron Axiom 23mm eyepieces
Magnification of 163X
Cartridge paper, HB Derwent pencil & blending stump.
Image scanned and mirror flipped.
Dale Holt, Hertfordshire, UK
7th May 2007. around 20:30UT
Novo Cice, Croatia
This sketch was created on plain A4 paper using graphite pencils and
fingers (for blurring). Later it was scanned and inverted in Photoshop
after some minor contrast and brightness adjustments.
I used 8″ F6 Dobson and 6mm Super Plossl Eyepiece. Magnification was
200x and field of view was 0.25°. Limiting magnitude was 5.50 and
transparency was very good.
M13 is beautiful globular cluster in Hercules. With an apparent
magnitude of 5.8, it is barely visible with the naked eye on a very
clear night. Its real diameter is about 145 light-years, and is composed
of several hundred thousand stars, the brightest of which has an
apparent magnitude of 11.95. M13 is 25,100 light-years away from Earth.
Vedran Vrhovac
www.inet.hr/~vevrhova/english/index.htm
In the morning hours before sun-up the early waning crescent moon was superimposed
on the firmament just west of the Pleiades. I was somewhat transfixed by this
scene but I was set up to sketch “straight wall” on the floor of the lunar Sea of
Clouds. From the eastern edge of Mare Nubium you can see the Triplet craters
Thebit (57 km), A and L. Next moving westward is the Imbrian escarpment Rupes
Recta , not a true wall in the usual sense but on one side standing more than 300
meters high at some points and 114 km in length. The scarp face would be visible
from crater Birt (17 km) to the west, the youngest of the larger craters sketched
here. Touching the rim of Birt to the east is Birt A. Continuing westward we see
Rima Birt a 51 km rille from the Imbriam epoch. At the end of the rille to the
south, is tiny 3 km crater Birt F seen in this sketch. Finally sitting on a
wrinkle in the floor of the mare is crater Nicollet (15 km) a Eratosthenian epoch
impact scar.
Sketching:
For this sketch I used: white copy paper, graphite pencil and pen and ink
Contrast adjusted with Imageenhance software
Telesccope: 18 inch f/ 5 Dobsonian working at 222X (9mm ocular)
Date: 8-16-2006 9:30-10:35 UT
Temperature: 17°C ( 62°F)
Clear, calm
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Colongitude 178 °
Lunation 22.3 days
Illumination 45.9%
Frank McCabe
