Nebulae – Page 48 – Astronomy Sketch of the Day

Sparkling Lagoon

14th June, 2007., around 21:00 UT
Petrova gora, Croatia

Last night I had another opportunity to observe. But this time, we went
to the Petrova gora, mountain maybe 1000 ft high, about 40 miles South
from the Zagreb and 20 miles South-East from the Karlovac (pop: 60 000).
Light pollution is still evident on northern horizon but to the South,
skies are beautiful. NELM near zenith was 6.10, not much difference from
the best night in my backyard (NELM 5.80) but big difference is that
there is no glare from street lamps and glow from nearby populated
places so sky is much darker. Watching MW composed from many clouds,
with few bright spots (M24, M8, M25), seeing M7 by naked eye is
wonderful feeling. Statement that there is no substitute for dark skies
hold very well. Of course, I used this opportunity to make more
sketches. I hope you will like results.

My process of creating sketches goes like this:
First, I observe and draw field sketch, full of notes, corrections and
other helpful stuff. After returning to house, I redraw all sketches to
include missing details, remove errors and to get better contrast under
white light. Next step is scanning of sketches. Afters scanning, I do
further adjustments of contrast in the Photoshop and add circle
representing that represents FOV. Last thing is description and saving
sketch in .tff and .jpg format.

I’m sketching on plain A4 paper with graphite pencils of different
hardness.

Vedran Vrhovac

Cat’s Eye in a dracon’s hand

Cat’s Eye Nebula

One of the better known bright summer planetary nebulas in the constellation of Draco is NGC 6543. This blue-green planetary appears to be about one third of a minute of arc across, although its “outer corona” brings it out to about six arc minutes. The brightest part of this “outer corona” is IC 4677. None of this outer region can be seen from my urban site. The glow around the dying, hot, type O central star (or perhaps close binary pair) appears homogenous. None of the curlicue compressed gas loops were visible that can be seen in photographs. Some darkness was seen around the tenth magnitude central star. At a visual magnitude of 8.1 and at a distance of somewhere between 3300-3600 light years, this thousand year old planetary nebula looks great in telescopes much smaller than 18 inches.

Sketching:

Date and Time: 6-17-2007, 518-5:50 UT
Scope: 18” f/5 Dobson Ian. 12mm, 9mm eyepieces 191x, 254x
8”x12” white sketching paper, B, 2B graphite pencils, light brown colored pencil for nebula, scanned and inverted, contrast mean value adjustment using Imageenhance, star magnitude adjustments using Paint
Seeing: Pickering 7/10
Transparency: poor 2/5
Nelm: 3.9

Frank McCabe

Terrific Trifid

Emission Nebula M20

14th June, 2007., around 21:30 UT
Petrova gora, Croatia

I’m sketching on plain A4 paper with graphite pencils of different
hardness.

Vedran Vrhovac

A work in progress

The Orion nebula may be one of the most challenging objects in the sky to observe.
The amount of subtle detail it displays is astonishing and it is perhaps one of the
most difficult nebula to sketch.

Edward Holden’s monograph on the central area of M42 (Central Parts of the Nebula of
Orion, Washington Astronomical Observations for 1878, Appendix I) inspired me to
attempt to follow the footsteps of great visual observers of the the past — the
Herschels, Lassell, Rosse, Bond, etc.– and try to capture the wealth of details
seen in my 18″ reflector. I might add that my sketch is a composite drawing made
with apertures ranging from 70mm to a 20″ reflector. A separate drawing was made on
each evening of observing and combined into a single rendering. The Dearborn
Observatory star maps (claimed to go down to the 18th magnitude) were used to insure
the proper “placing” of the details noted with the various telescopes. The
(unfinished) drawing is still a work in progress after two years of observing.
Magnifications on my 18″ reflector ranged from ~60X (40 mm Pentax) to ~460X (5mm
Radian). The lowest power used: 12X with my Pronto 70mm refractor!

I settled on using a graphite pencil after experimenting with charcoal and soft
lead pencils. Nothing fancy here — just graphite on regular (economy) typing
paper from Office Depot. The drawing was color-inverted using my HP scanner and
tinted with the Paint program.

An extended observing session revealed details I hadn’t noticed before. The
remarkable D’Arrest “comets” were visible only when the transparency was good. The
prominent dark “globule” W1 was seen so well through a 24″ reflector one evening
that my first impression was that there was a bit of dirt on the field lens of my
eyepiece!

I hope that in another two years I can finish the drawing.

Dave Riddle

The winter King

Sketch of M42 drawn with graphite pencil on white paper, hand made directly
looking throught the 12 x 80 binoculars sitting in a quiet place in the
centre of Guadalajara country.

The night was very clear and transparent, without clouds and no pollution. I
was drawing it looking with both eyes, it was wonderful because the nebula
was very bright, three nebula regions were visible surounding star clusters
(north and south of M42)

I scanned the sketch and changed to negative only. This is my first M42, I
remember the night was very cold and the pain in my fingers while drawing
it. The image through the binoculars was esplendid, impresionant, very
bright, impossible to draw all the stars in the field.

I hope you enjoy it.

Leonor Ana

Subtle Southern Splendor

Located 2.2° north of 4th magnitude Phi (φ) Centauri, you’ll find what discoverer
John Herschel termed a “remarkable object”: a neat little double star shrouded in a
circular haze of nebulosity. Described as “bright” in several references I was
expecting something a little more conspicuous in the eyepiece than this object
proved to be.

My first view of this object occurred atop a wind-blasted bluff at Sunset Crater
National Monument in Arizona on May 12, 2007 (UT), and was hampered not only by the
howling winds but poor transparency near the horizon that only became truly apparent
a few hours later when the rising Milky Way failed to reveal itself in its usual
splendor as the Sagittarius through Cygnus region rose in the east. A second
observation took place two days later back home in California under somewhat
improved conditions (at least as far as horizon haze was concerned) and this sketch
was completed.

The initial appearance of NGC 5367 is that of a faint circular haze, about 3′ in
diameter surrounding a 10th magnitude star (which proves to be double at high
magnifications, and bears the designation h4636). Its appearance (particularly on
May 12) was very much like the halo produced by a slightly dewed up eyepiece. Two
field stars of similar magnitude did not exhibit this characteristic, however, thus
demonstrating that the haze surrounding the star was genuine nebulosity in the
depths of space and not condensation on my eyepiece.

With less certainty, averted vision sporadically hinted at more extensive structure
here, especially while slowly slewing the telescope back and forth in an east-west
motion. Faint strands of nebulosity curving northward from the circular haze
partially delineate a dark cometary globule (designated CG 12). This globule also
sends a dusky finger southward into the heart of the reflection nebula. Additional
nebulosity (designated GN 13.54.9) was suspected around a 12th magnitude star about
6′ to the south-southeast and possibly a tenuous bridge between the two patches.

Subject: NGC 5367
Object Type: Reflection Nebula
Constellation: Centaurus
Right Ascension (2000.0): 13h 57m 42.0s
Declination (2000.0): –39° 59′ 00″
Diameter(s): 2.5′ x 2.5′

Subject: J. Herschel 4636
Object Type: Double Star
Constellation: Centaurus
Right Ascension (2000.0): 13h 57m 43.1s
Declination (2000.0): –39° 58′ 45″
Magnitudes: 9.9, 10.5
Separation: 3.6″
Position Angle: 33°

Observer: Eric Graff
Location: Cuyamaca Mts., San Diego Co., California (4000 ft. elevation)
Date & Time: 14 May 2007 at 05:15 UT
Transparency: NELM ~6.2
Seeing: Pickering 6/10
Telescope: Parks Astrolight EQ6 (6″ f/6 Newtonian Reflector)
Eyepiece: 7.5mm Parks Gold Series-5 Plössl (120x, 26′ TFoV)
Filter: None
Sketching Materials: #2 pencil, black ink, blending stump, 24# copy paper

References:
NGC/IC Project: http://www.ngcic.org/
SIMBAD: http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/
WDS: http://ad.usno.navy.mil/wds/
Cragin, Murray and Emil Bonamno. 2001. Uranometria 2000.0, Volume 3: The Deep Sky
Field Guide. Willmann-Bell, Inc. Richmond Virginia U.S.A.
Jones, Kenneth Glyn, Ed. 1987. Webb Society Deep-Sky Observers Handbook, Volume 7:
The Southern Sky. Enslow Publishers, Inc. Hillside, New Jersey U.S.A.
Strong, Robert A., and Roger W. Sinnott. 2000. Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion, 2nd
Edition. Sky Publishing Corporation. Cambridge, Massachusetts U.S.A.

Sword of the hunter

One of the most majestic places to visit with a small scope or binocular might be
the sword of Orion. With every new magnification this fascinating complex of
clusters and nebulae shows more hidden treasures. So here is a 4° Fov impression of Orions Sword.

Place : Bekkevoort,
Date : Feb 21, 2007
Time : 21.00UT
Seeing : 3 (of 5)
Transp. : 2 (of 5)

Scope : ETX 70 with 26mm SP, no filter.
Power : 14x
Fov : 3,9°

North is up (bino orientation)

The sketch is digitally ‘drawn’ with Photopaint, based on a raw EP-sketch. I hope
you like it.
Rony De Laet

http://www.geocities.com/rodelaet, my personal website.

A Herald of Summer

In April, later a night, a bright star comes crawling above the horizon
in the East, dragging behind it a constellation, well-known to even the
youngest of astronomers, and all at once you know that Summer is
approaching again. Wega and with it the Constellation of Lyra is rising
again, bringing with it one of the most famous objects of the summer sky,
if not one of the most famous objects of the sky altogehter: M 57,
the Ring Nebula.

This was my second attempt at sketching it, this time I used an
OIII-filter and there is no way of telling what a difference it made.
The nebula, which had before just appeared as an even ring with a
somewhat milky center, suddenly started to reveal many details, darker
and lighter areas, an elongated halo – all of which convinced me that
apart from a good sky and obersving experience an OIII-filter is one of
the most powerful tools at the hands of an observer of planetary nebulae.

The drawing, which was done with white pastels on black cardboard again,
turned out pretty well.

Sebastian Lehner

Fire in the sky

I used a Watec 120N deep sky video camera running through a Synta 6″ F5 refractor to display a real time image of ‘The Flame Nebula’ NGC 2024 on a TV monitor. This image was Superior to that at the eyepiece of my 14″ F5 Newtonian on which the refractor rode even when employing a UHC filter!

Using light weight black card, white watercolour pencils and blending stumps I attempted to record the spectacle as best I could, resulting in this scanned and totally unprocessed image.

Dale Holt

Kiss of the spider

NGC 2070 (30 Doradus) The Tarantula Nebula

Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud in Southern Skies, the Tarantula
Nebula has an apparent magnitude of 8 and is about 160,000 light years
distant.

The exciting thing about ‘The Tarantula’ is that it is a nebula in ‘another
Galaxy’. If it was as close to us as the Orion Nebula is, it would fill 60
degrees of the sky and far outshine Venus!

It is named ‘The Tarantula’ due to it’s appearance being like a giant
spider.

Drawn with number 3 pencil on white art board, scanned and inverted in
Photoshop CS. Red Hue added in Photoshop CS.
Date Drawn: 2006 while observing Tarantula through a 12″ reflector with a
32mm 2″ Erfle Eyepiece.

Ken James
Snake Valley, Australia