Messier 104 was described by Charles Messier as a “faint nebula” In 1784.
Now Messier 104 is known as a Sa-Sb spiral galaxy. It has a Very bright core
which was a major feature in my sketch. I noticed the dust lane cutting
through the galaxy but the side of the galaxy opposite the core is much fainter
than the rest. It was hard to see in my 16″ F/4.5 Dobsonian at 110X.
~Sal Grasso
Andromeda galaxy
This sketch of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) was done on a very clear, transparant
night in November 2006 with my 8” f/5 dob. M32 was always visible as an out focus star. M110 was visible too, but very faint. I could get an image of the three in my GSO superview 30mm. the sketch was done using the 24 & 15mm panoptic eyepieces. I think I saw 1 and perhaps a second dustlane in the galaxy.
The sketch was done with pencils on standard printerpaper, scanned and inverted the
colors. Only the brightness is increased a bit trying to imitate the background glow
of the sky, making the sketch more realistic I feel.
Sketched on the 26th November 2006 from my home in Bornem, Belgium. I used my 8” f/5
dob at 33x (30mm gso superview), 42x (24mm panoptic) and 66x (15mm panoptic).
Kris Smet
As with all Galaxies, looking at Messier 81 is another trip down the
collective memory lane of the Universe. Twelve million years – that’s
the age of the light reaching us from Bode’s Galaxy and by cosmical
standards that’s not even really old.
Just like M 82, its edge-on partner galaxy, M 81 is well worth a closer
look, even though the number of visible detail is by far smaller than in
M 82.
What you can actually see is a bright core and a diffuse halo, quickly
dropping of in brightness from the center to the edges and with only
undefined detail visible.
Still Bode’s Galaxy belongs to the brightest and most fascinating
objects of its kind, a must-see for any astronomer out there in search
of a good view.
Date: April 12, 2007
Location: Kegelhaus, Erbendorf, Bavaria, Germany
Instrument: Dobsonian 8″ f/6
Constellation: Ursa major
Seeing: II of VI
Transparency: II of VI
NELM: 6m0
Magnification: 133x
Sebastian Lehner
Wow, taking a closer look at the Cigar is really worth the effort. After
a drawing of M 82 together with its companion M 81, I took the advice to
have a closer look seriously and I haven’t regretted it in the least.
Just look at how much detail becomes visible after only half an hour of
observation, it might definitely be worth another visit anytime soon to
work up further features of this wonderful object. A bright core, light
and dark lanes, circular structures, it’s all there, ready to be
discovered by the avid eye of the observer.
Date: April 12, 2007
Location: Kegelhaus, Erbendorf, Bavaria, Germany
Instrument: Dobsonian 8″ f/6
Constellation: Ursa major
Seeing: II of VI
Transparency: II of VI
NELM: 6m0
Magnification: 133x
Sebastian Lehner
M81 and M82
Here is another digital sketch. It’s the first one made with a digital tablet and a
pressure sensitive pen. It feels more natural than using a mouse to draw nebulosity
or to smudge out an area. The application (Photo-Paint) controls the relationship
between the pressure you apply with the pen to the tablet, and the effect produced
by brush tools in Corel PHOTO-PAINT. As you press down on a drawing tablet with the
pen, the effect produced by such tools changes. Several attributes can be changed at
the same time by pressure, like size, brightness, opacity etc. Like a common pencil,
a line can be drawn thicker by applying more pressure with the pen. I’m still in an
experimental phase with the settings. I hope you like the sketch.
Date : March 12, 2007
Time : 21.14UT
Scope : Skywatcher 102/500
EP : Vixen LV Zoom at 8mm
Power : 63x
FOV: 50′
Filter : none
Seeing : 3/5
Transp. : 2.5/5
Sketch Orientation : N up, W right.
Digital sketch made with a wireless digital tablet and a pressure sensitive pen in
PhotoPaint, based on a raw pencil sketch.
Rony De Laet
http://www.geocities.com/rodelaet, my personal website.
Virgo Cluster panorama
This sketch was made from McDonald Observatory’s parking lot near Fort
Davis, Texas, during a trip down south. I used a 14.5″ Dobsonian and 26mm
Plossl eyepiece, and graphite on paper (reversed in Photoshop for effect). I
had prepared circles for sketching, but we ran into a streak of 6 clear
nights and I ran out, and had left my circle template back in Winnipeg. I
decided to just start sketching without the boundary of an eyepiece filed
and see what happened. I really like the wide-field effect of not using an
eyepiece FOV circle – especially for clusters that need to be seen in
context.
Scott Young
Messier 94 is a beautiful galaxy in the constellation of Canes venatici;
with a distance of 17 million light years and a diameter of 56000 light
years, it contains about 60 billion sun masses. M 94 is a starburst galaxy.
The conditions, when I observed it, were very good, good transparency
and seeing, so I was able to clearly discern a stellar core, a brighter
inner and a darker outer halo. All of this was embedded into a faint and
distant glow, which faded into nothing at the outer rim.
Sebastian Lehner
Date: March 16, 2007
Location: Steinwald, Bavaria, Germany
Instrument: Dobsonian 8″ f/6
Constellation: Canes venatici
Seeing: I-II of VI
Transparency: I of VI
NELM: 6m4
Magnification:133x
Sketch Medium: White pastels and white ink on black cardboard.
The interacting galaxy pair consisting of NGC 3166 and NGC 3169 is one of the unsung extragalactic showpieces of the spring sky. They may be located in the north-central region of Sextans, 8.5° south of Regulus. Separated by 6.3′, these two galaxies look like nearly identical twins in my 6-inch scope; they give the strong impression of a ghostly pair of eyes peering from beneath a star-studded hood. NGC 3166 is slightly smaller and dimmer than its companion but it has a more conspicuous central region with a sharp stellar nucleus. NGC 3169 also has a bright core but it is not as well concentrated as its neighbor’s. A 12th magnitude star is superimposed on NGC 3169’s diffuse outer halo, just east of the central core. With a magnification of 60x and placing NGC 3169 near the northeastern edge of the field of view I can just squeeze in the faint galaxy NGC 3156 just west of a trio of 7th, 8th, and 9th magnitude stars (it lies just 2′ from the faintest of the three stars). This little galaxy is elongated northeast to southwest and has a slightly brighter center. A much fainter galaxy, NGC 3165, glimmers intermittently with averted vision 5.4′ southwest of NGC 3166.
William Herschel discovered NGC 3166 and NGC 3169 on December 19, 1783 with his 18.7-inch reflector. He designated them as the 3rd and 4th entries (respectively) in his catalog of “Bright Nebulae”. Both of these galaxies are included in the popular “Herschel 400″ observing list. Each of these galaxies shows evidence of tidal interaction and distortion on photographs. NGC 3169 has a highly distorted spiral arm, while the dust lanes of NGC 3166 have been fragmented and twisted as if
the entire disk has been warped by the interaction with its neighbor. It is estimated that these galaxies lie 52 million light-years away.
Subject: NGC 3166 and NGC 3169
Object Type: Interacting Galaxy Pair
Constellation: Sextans
NGC 3166 (H.I.3)
Right Ascension (2000.0): 10h 13m 45.8s
Declination (2000.0): +03° 25′ 30″
Magnitude: 10.4
Diameter: 4.6′ x 2.6′
Classification: SAB(rs)0/a
NGC 3169 (H.I.4)
Right Ascension (2000.0): 10h 14m 15.0s
Declination (2000.0): +03° 27′ 58″
Magnitude: 10.2
Diameter: 5.0′ x 2.8′
Classification: SA(s)a pec
Observer: Eric Graff
Location: Cuyamaca Mts., San Diego Co., California (4,000 ft. elevation) Date &
Time: 12 March 2007 at 07:35UT
Transparency: NELM 6.7, TLM ~14.1
Seeing: Pickering 5-6/10
Telescope: Parks Astrolight EQ6 (6” f/6 Newtonian Reflector)
Eyepiece: 15mm Parks Gold Series Plössl (60x, 52′ TFoV)
Filter: None
Sketching Materials: #2 pencil, black ink, blending stump, 24# copy paper
Here is my sketch of Messier 77 (Seyfert Galaxy). It was done on January 19, 2007, with a 12″ Lightbridge. The seeing and transparency were both average. The medium I used was Graphite pencil.
Sal Grasso
Messier 77 is a beautiful face on spiral that lies is the midst of a small group of galaxies in the southern constellation of Cetus. It has the distinction of being one of the most distant of Messier’s famous non comet inventory at about 60 million light years away. This sprawling city of stars is fully 100,000 light years wide and appears to harbor a supermassive blackhole that is currently energizing an accretion disc of infalling dust and gas. Studies with the Chandra Observatory show a beam of X-Ray radiation that is aligned along an axis passing through the galaxy’s core. The presumed engine is the dynamo action of the accretion disc; hot plasmas race around the hole at close to the speed of light, creating magnetic fields that confine and eject matter along the rotation axes of the monsterous gravitational maw.
Object: Messier 51, The Whirlpool Galaxy
Classification: Galaxy
Position: RA 13h 29.9 min, DEC 47° 12′
Distance: ~23 million light years
Visual Brightness: 8m4
Apparent Dimension: 11′ x 7′
Constellation: Canes venatici
Observing Location: Erbendorf, Steinwald, Bavaria, Germany (800 meters
above sea level)
NELM: 6m2
Seeing: II / VI
Transparency: I-II / VI
Date: March 15, 2007
Instrument: Dobsonian 8″ f/6
Eyepiece: Reese 9mm Super Wide Angle
Magnification: 133x
Sketching Materials: black cardboard, white pastels, white ink, blending stump
A lot of work and patience went into the above drawing of M 51 to bring out as much detail and structure as possible: after one hour of dark adaption, another hour of pure observing and one more hour of sketching was invested, to get a glimpse of the subtle dark and light structures inside the diffuse nebulosity, which is generated by the object. At a first look, two blurry, bright smudges appear in the eyepiece, which can each be separated into a bright, almost stellar core surrounded by a diffuse, somewhat less brighter halo. It becomes apparent that the two objects are not located directly next to each other, but that there is a somewhat darker area in between, which is suddenly “cut off” by a brighter region in the east: the “bridge” of matter connecting the two galaxies! Inside M 51 A two slightly brighter regions start to appear, which bend away from the core and “dissolve” in the galactic disc: a hint of the spiral structure! Finally, two faint stars can be observed, which are apparently located East and West of the core, they are supposedly stars in the foreground. It may be noted here that the detail depicted in the drawing is the result of many hours of observation and patient use of averted vision, resulting in some sort of “sum picture”, which is surely not visible at a first glance. The beginner may be completely satisfied, if he can recognize the two discs and their cores – all the other details will appear with constant and regular observing.
Sebastian Lehner
