Category: Planetary

Mercury in the Evening, Near Eastern Elongation

I was able to observe Mercury on March 19, 2011 (00:00 U.T.) over the western horizon (~23.5*) using my friend’s excellent Meade 8-inch (20-cm) F/10 ACF SCT at 120x. I was impressed with the fact that albedo features were visible over the planet while using an aperture down to 4 inches (10 cm) at a friend’s observatory. The seeing over the western horizon at sunset (twilight) was very erratic but while airing for moments of steady seeing I was rewarded by the features noted below.

Date (U.T.): March 19, 2011
Time (U.T.): 00:00
CM 77.8*W, Ls 128.5*, De -5.3*, Ds 0.1*
-0.7m, p 60%, 6.7″
Instrument: Meade 8-inch (20-cm) F/10 ACF SCT
Magnification: 120x
Filters: None (IL)
Seeing (1-10): 4-6, Antoniadi (I-V): III-IV

A digital image produced in Photoshop CS5.

Carlos E. Hernandez

Thin Moon and Jupiter

Thin Moon and Jupiter

I was able to view a very thin Waxing Crescent Moon (2.8 days old, -7.96m, ~34.5 degrees above the western horizon) and Jupiter (-2.06m, ~23.5 degrees) over the western sunset sky on March 7, 2011 (23:15 U.T.). The sky was a brilliant orange-red color closest to the western horizon with lavender blue clouds above it. Jupiter was peeking through the clouds and the thin Crescent Moon was a ghostly figure in the pastel blue sky.

A digital image produced in Pixelmator

Carlos E. Hernandez

Close and Far

Hey Artists!

I follow up with my own sketch of the remnant of the SN 1054, “The Crab Nebula”, (M. 1)
togather with a visitor, a comet which passed right over the western part of the Crab earlier
this day.
My sketch is old, but I think its still interesting.
I used crayons (watercolours) on black paper only. Info on my sketch.

The observation was made outside Trondheim, Norway.

Clear sky , Per-Jonny Bremseth.

Opposition of Jupiter in 2010

Hello.
Here is my sketch of Jupiter’s 05-08-2010.szkicowałem pencil, light treatment in GIMP.szkic done from memory and my notes from that day during the observation of this planet, so all details are in place. 🙂 Seeing was good. achromatic Vixen telescope is 80/1200 with the eyepiece 9mm UO HD Ortho at 133x.

Meeting of Jupiter and Uranus

Hey, and Happy New Year to all!!

It was very interesting to observe both planets, Jupiter and Uranus so close together as 31 arcmin.
I could see only one Jupiter moon to west in my 10 x 50 binocular.
The sky was very clean, 0 deg. C, and no wind or other interference.
I did not see the partial eclipse in the morning , but I enjoyed this conjunctione!

Best wishes from Per-Jonny Bremseth. More info on my sketch!

Escorted Jupiter

Object Name: Jupiter
Object Type: planet
Location: Itajobi, SP, Brazil
Date: 29/12/2010 – 23h20min U.T.
Media: 0.5mm 2B graphite pencil, white paper, scanned then colours edited with Nero PhotoSnap Viewer

Telescope: reflector 180mm (7.1″) f/D=6 (f=1080mm) dob mounted
Eyepieces: Super Plossl 32mm; Plossl 10mm; Super Plossl 6mm
Three-element 2.5x Barlow (not a good option that night)
Turbulence: 3/5 (regular)
A fair wind lasted all night long. It was a hot summer, cloudless night. In the sketch, aligned, from left to right: Europa, Jupiter, Io, Ganimedes and Callisto. A star can be seen in the bottom (20 Psc), really similar to the Galilean Moons. Another star, very faint, tried to show some contrast over the glow of the planet. Few minutes later, Jupiter hide behind my house, escorted by its moons and the stars. So that’s what I saw that night, from my backyard, in a small town, struggling against the sodium lights of the city: a beautiful Jupiter, surrounded by its 4 greatest moons, and two stars. I tried all combinations of lenses, however the 10mm (without the barlow) produced the best image. I hope you enjoy it, new sketches of a nebulae, a galaxy and Saturn are coming soon.

P.S. If you are going to comment, please say to my friend Camila that my sketches aren’t that bad. Thank’s!

Clear skies to everybody, and a happy new year,
Rodrigo Pasiani Costa.

Burning Candles at Both Ends

Clear skies and a prominent day-11 moon on the evening of 16th December had me out really enjoying sketching; it wasn’t too cold (to begin with), the skies were clear, the target was high and I had plenty of time…..all a rare occurrence.

I sketched one of the most architecturally pleasing parts of the moon; the Sinus Iridum, which is a large crater/small basin with a partially flooded rim.

Of the two promontories, the one on the right (Promontorium Heraclides) is also known as the moon maiden, because at certain times it resembles the profile of a lady, with her long hair falling away off her shoulders. Also visible are the wrinkle ridges which might be traces of the buried rim, and craters Bianchini, Maupertuis, La Condamine and Bouguer.

Awaking on 17th at 4am with busy thoughts, I decided that viewing Saturn would be better than attempting to get back to sleep. And so it was.

I was surprised by quite a lot. The rings had opened up quite a bit since I saw them last spring. Not being close to opposition, the planet was quite small and I couldn’t see much detail on the planet itself. Only one moon was obvious; Titan predictably. With effort, another moon could be viewed roughly forming a right-angled triangle between Titan and the planet; it’s the faint spot at middle-left of the picture. This turned out to be Iapetus, which was pleasing because I haven’t seen that very often. It was new for me to see a moon so out of plane with the planet and the rings as last year they were mostly in line. It was good to see such old friends again.

* Object Name – Sinus Iridium, Mare Imbrium; Saturn, Titan, Iapetus.
* Object Type – Lunar Crater, Mare; Planet, Moons.
* Location – York, UK
* Date 16th December 2010, 17th December 2010
* Media – Graphite pencil on white paper. Observing instrument: Skywatcher Skyliner 152mm f8 Dobsonian, 10mm e.p., x2 Barlow.

Venus, Saturn and Handful of Frost

Hello!
Last night I and my Friends we have a great observation night in Oderne, in south Poland – beautiful place among Beskid mountains. We have very good, clear sky but there was very chill. We have very low temperature at night. About -20°C (about -4°F). In central Europe during the Winter, it is nothing strange. But it is necessary to be a tough to make all night observations in this conditions 😉
After many hours of the good observations we take a little nap. We have resumed our observations at 4 AM to get the first Venus and Saturn since few months.
There was intense, severe frost.

Object: Planets Venus and Saturn
Scope: SCT 5″ with SW UWA58 9mm
Time and date: December 5th, 2010. About 4:00 AM
Place: Oderne, Poland
Weather: Clear, dark sky. Heavy frost.
Technique: Graphite pencil
Tooling: Some correction with PhotoShop
Observer: Aleksander Cieśla (Wimmer)

I have a interesting foto from that observations.
There was really heavy frost. After all my equipment was operating quite good 🙂 There was strange noise from motors of my Celestron SLT mount, like howling 😉 But all night long it was operating correctly. I have little problems with corrector plate of my C5 SCT too, but dew shield works not bad. Most problems we have with the eyepieces. Puting the eyepiece to the poket at several minutes – that was an easy solution of this problem.
During that night my equipment looks like that: 🙂

Thank You, and sorry for my bad english.