Saturn – May 9, 2014 (above) and April 30, 2014 (below)
Desire to see the more deep ancient lunar horizon landscapes lead me to build more larger instruments,
since last autmn,s first light I have 10 nights observations with my homemade 13″ refractor [lens from China 320/3700] which has a comfortable fixed focuser in equartorial mount.
With a glass 5 times more heavier than 8″ lens this 13″ shows far majesic views of the moon and planets than the superb 8″…… and but at least on the moon limbs , the details seems to equal…. yet.
Yesterday, on a good seeing night , I could see a great view of the saturn that I have never seen yet. —————-
Object Name : C/2013 R1 (LOVEJOY)
Object Type : comet
Location : Laprade lake (Aude), south-west France
Date : December 04 2013 4h45 TU
Media : graphite pencil, white paper + PhotoPaint
Comments :
The LOVEJOY coma is bright and light green colour. A darker ring surrounds the shiny nucleus.
The tail is wide and about 10° long. It is rather white.
I saw it easily with binocular 10×50 on the left of Boots constellation.
Condition : A very good and dark night, no moon, no wind, pretty good seeing.
I could report mag 7 to 12 starfield.
No significative named star in the field.
Equipment : 300mm Dobson Telescope + 24mm Ultra Wide Angle eyepiece (mag X64 FOV 1.3°)
Sketch was made with pencil on white paper while observing the comet before sunrise (-2°C)
A bit of image processing was used to invert the image and give it some colour.
Mars – April 29, 2014Mars feature location and nomenclature chart – April 29, 2014
I made an observation of Mars on April 29, 2014 (03:30 U.T. or 11:30 PM EDT) using a 9-inch (23-cm) F/13.5 Maksutov-Cassegrain at 258x and 310x. Syrtis Major was prominent preceding the central Meridian (CM) with a cloud noted over its midsection flowing towards the East and into Libya (extending from an Equatorial Cloud Band (ECB) extending from from the following limb). The Hellas basin was noted to be very bright south of Syrtis Major towards the southern limb. Sinus Sabaeus was visible as a dark extension from the CM towards the South-following limb. The North Polar Cap (NPC) appeared small and brilliant. The NPC was surrounded by a dark collar. Dark to dusky maria was noted over the northern hemisphere of Mars. I have included an image that is labeled with the nomenclature of the majority of albedo features noted.I hope that you all like it.
Hello, here is a picture of Mars made with my Dobsonian Telescope 12 “equipped with a binocular , with a magnification of 500x. Viewing conditions were really excellent, which was rare in early spring … Many details were visible, including the famous Syrtis Major and Sinus Sabaeus visible right training up. I also observed a beautiful cloud formation on Elysium, left visible at sunset
Détails :
Object : Mars
Location : France (Vendée-Atlantic)
Date : 20/04/2014
Support : Mars Gabarit and Pencils Derwent Academy
Good reception and thank you for your interest
Best regard, Yohan Archambaud ( Vendée, France)
Mars in color – April 19, 2014Mars – April 19, 2014
Mars April 19 2014
Conditions were poor to average for viewing and sketching Mars. Mars is now at 15″ of arc and 0.62 A.U. from us. 99.4% of the disk is illuminated and shining at visual magnitude -1.4. The central meridian of Mars was centered at about 41.87° at the beginning time of the sketch.
Sinus Meridiani was visible near the limb on the preceding side. On this side clouds were visible over Eden. Mare Erythraeum, Margaritifer sinus and Aurorae sinus were all detectable to the south (up). Lighter Chryse could be seen at the equator with Niliacus Lacus, Mare Acidalium and Nilokeras blended together. Tharsis was under clouds on the following limb. The north polar cap is small in size and set apart by Mare Boreum.
Equipment and Sketching:
This is an eyepiece sketch made with a HB graphite pencil, blending stumps, White Pearl eraser on white sketching paper. The colorized sketch made indoors was completed using ground shavings of colored pencils (blue, orange, yellow, white)
Date 04/19/2014 – Time 05:00 – 05: 48 UT
Telescope: 13.1 inch f/5.9 Dobsonian and 9mm eyepiece 218x with a single polarizing filter and Neodymium filter used together; An Equatorial platform was also used
Hello my Friends ASOD, I observed a few days ago from the home to the neighboring planet, with good views, but with the pollution of the city there are no problems for red small. Continents showed well defined in my scope and feel free to make this sketch giving rise to the original on the right side shown in the image and colored on the other side giving a hue similar to that shown by the eyepiece, for further reducing the image and display framing the view. It was a nice domestic observation learning a little more about our sister planet perhaps.
Best Regards.
Object name: Mars
Object type: Planet
Location: Madrid ( Spain )
Date: 18 April 2014
Hour: 00:30 < 01:45
Media: graphite pencil, Tortillon, processed and inverted gimp 2.8
Optical equipment: Dobsonian telescope Meade Lightbridge 10'' F/5 Eye piece Ethos 8mm + Barlow 2x
Magnification 317x True field 0,3°
•Object Name (Mars)
•Object Type (Planet)
•Location (Artignosc sur Verdon – France)
•Date (April 15th)
•Media (Watercolour on white paper, digital tools Paint.Net for the text)
I use my 4” refractor (achromatic) f/10 – 200x to make the initial sketch; sadly the 12” Dobson give me less contrast for this target. Although the full Moon was very bright, (maybe more bright because of the clear sky of my new small village of Artignosc), details on Mars were easy to watch.
After making the first sketch, some locals came in my backyard to have a look, I like that, and sharing beauty is so easy to do.
For this image I use watercolour, on a very humid 300gr paper, I let the pigment floating as I saw the planet colours. The water helps me to give a natural look and feel. Of course this image has no any scientific value; this is just to keep a souvenir of this Mars close passage. Don’t try to compare the little details of my watercolour with reality; I let that to my astrophotography friends, they are so good today!
Planet Mars on sunday 13th of april 2014, sketch is made five days after mars was in opposition. We should expect that during opposition – april 8th – the smallest distance between our blue and the red planet is achieved. However, this time the two planets elliptical orbit reaches it’s closets distance on april the 14th.
The sketch is made on sunday the 13th of april 2014. The telescope : TEC 160ED, F8 – 11 mm Plossl eyepiece met 2x Barlow lens. TFov 0.3 °. Afterwards adapted in Pro-create en Psd
* Object Name: Mars
* Object Type: planet
* Location: La Fontasse (Tarn – France) N43.63 E2.35
* Date: April 6th 2014 21h40 UT
* Media: pencil HB + 2B, white drawing paper, scanned + colorized with PhotoPaint
As shown on the detailed view, I experimented the negative drawing with black pencil.
Just by inverting the image, I obtain quite the final result.
I just played with colour and contrast to make it “real”.
Next time I will try to make a negative drawing with blue pencil, to get directly the salmon colour of Mars…
NOTE : The pink colour is real, because of the lunar filter which adds a bluish-grayed hint
This filter provides more contrast and reduces the light intensity.
Conditions: humidity 60%, 12°C, no wind.
Equipment:
– Dobson Orion XT12 (305 x 1500mm => F/D 5)
– Eyepiece Televue Delos 4.5mm (mag x 330)
– Moon filter 1.25″
Excellent transparency and very good seing
Half Moon shining in Gemini
Because of the moonlight, the star party was dedicated to planetary observation.
So I decided to make my first sketch of Mars, as I only once could really see it with details last year.
For the first time I could distinctly see two dark zones : one butterfly shaped (right) and one banana shaped (left)
The sky was good enough to expect to see the north polar ice cap.
I actually saw a scattered brighter spot on the upper part of the disk.
As you never know the orientation of an object in your eyepiece, I decided this was the north pole ice cap of Mars.
Back home, while looking for the name of the dark zones (Acidalia Planitia & Meridiani Planum), I discovered that the north pole was on the right side of the disk.
So, what was this white spot ???
I found the explanation from a recent photo of Mars, on spaceweathergallery.com, showing a white cloud storm, in the same area.
This is how I discovered my new speciality: meteorologist of Mars ! 🙂
Thanks for your interest.
Jean-Marc Saliou
APAM astro club – France
