Jupiter – Page 15 – Astronomy Sketch of the Day

Jovial Giant

Jupiter-July 11th, 2007
By Richard Handy

The fog along the San Diego coast finally relented enough for a observation and sketch of Jupiter last evening. The Atmosphere was steady enough at Antoniadi II by the time I started around 6:00 UT. I was so happy to get a chance to sketch at the eyepiece after such a long spell of foggy evenings. Jupiter’s elevation above my southern horizon made use of my binoviewers with a 45 degree erector diagonal so comfy! The creamy off-white colors separating the major bands caught my attention first, as they should I guess, since they seem to dominate in total area the visible face of Jupiter. Guess that’s why Jupiter appears like a bright yellow star to our naked eyes. The rusty hue of the NEB was fun to try to capture. I noted burnt sienna barges on some areas along it’s southern fringes. At places the bands appeared broken. The grayish caps at times looked to have little filigrees running along their margins, but the seeing just couldn’t hold long enough to render them.
Sketch details:

Object: Jupiter
Time: 5:57 UT until 6:35 UT Date: 7-12-07
Seeing: Antoniadi II Weather: clear
Telescope: Meade 12 SCT, f/10
Binoviewer: W.O. Bino-P with 1.6X nosepiece
W.O. 45 degree Erector Diagonal
Eyepieces 18 mm W.O. Plossl
Magnificaton: 271X
Medium: Colored Conte’ pencils and colored chalks on 9″ x 12″ Strathmore Artagain black paper
Sketch size: 9″ x12″ Jupiter’s disk is about 5″ in diameter

Jupiter’s Twilight Farewell

Jupiter
Gas Giant Planet
By Eric Graff

Parks Astrolight EQ6 • 6″ f/6 Newtonian Reflector
7.5mm Parks Gold Series Plössl + 2x Barlow • 240x, 13′ FoV
1 October 2007 • 02:30-03:00 UT

By the 1st of October, Jupiter is slipping quickly into the evening twilight, so I was pleased to make this final observation of Jupiter for the 2007 opposition. The four Galilean satellites are arrayed as follows (preceding to following): Europa (forming a close pair with a 10th magnitude field star), and Io on the west side of the planet; to the east, bright Ganymede forms another close pair with slightly fainter Callisto. Another faint field star lies just beyond these two, masquerading as yet another Jovian satellite.

The cloud belts of Jupiter displayed a pleasing amount of detail. The north equatorial belt is considerably darker than the south equatorial belt, which is split in two by a bright lane. Conversely, the south polar region was more prominent than its southern counterpart. The equatorial region itself was quite bright with subtle indications of the festoon activity which has lately characterized the region.

A Dance before the Laughing Giant

Europa Transit of Jupiter

The moon Europa, denoted by the tick marks as a bright spot against the North
Temperate Band was just beginning its transit across the disk of the planet
Jupiter. At about this same time the great red spot had just crossed Jupiter’s
meridian as the planet crossed my observing site meridian. I deemed this worth an
attempted sketch.

Sketching:
7/7/2007 2:50-3:15 UT
Scope 10” f/5.7 Dobsonian 9 mm UO eyepiece at 161x
4”x 6” white sketching paper, B, 2B, 4B graphite pencils,
Jupiter Sketch cut out and scanned with Europa added electronically using Microsoft
Paint
Seeing 7/10
Transparency average 2.5/ 5

Frank McCabe

Giant Colorful World of Gas

This sketch was done on Rite in the Rain paper with colored pencils. I used the
edge of my eraser shield for the bands and blending was difficult with the waxy feel
of the Prang pencils.

An Orion ED80 was used on an LXD75 mount, all of which were on antivibration pads in the observatory. The eyepiece was a Zhumell 21-7mm zoom

Erika Rix
Zanesville, Ohio

A Jovial Pair

This sketch was done on Rite in the Rain paper with a number 2 pencil. I used the
edge of my eraser shield for the bands and blending was done with my finger.

An Orion ED80 was used on an LXD75 mount, all of which were on antivibration pads in
the observatory. The eyepiece was a Zhumell 21-7mm zoom with a WO dielectric
diagnoal

Erika Rix
Zanesville, Ohio

Joys of Jupiter

This was the first sketch for me in a long while. It is a medium that I had moved
away from as I moved more into astrophotography. This site compeled me to give it
another go. You can see how the Jovian bands have become more mixed in the recent
months. This was also shown on a recent release of photos from Hubble. My sketch was
done with pencil on a sketch pad and reflect what I saw through a 12″ DOB using a
Televue Nagler type 6 7mm ep. It was really fun to experience this medium again. I
will certainly not wait so long for the next sketch. I hope that you enjoy it as
much as I enjoyed doing it.

Hulett Keaton
Eagle Mountain Station
Carpe noctem

The “Seeing Beater” versus the Jovial Giant

For observers in the northern hemisphere this opposition of Jupiter is not
a good one. This complex and fascinating gaseous world won’t manage
to rise above above the troubled horizon so views are going to be compromised during most if not all observations we attempt.

Having said this, Jupiter offers much to the observer seeking detail, OK it’s not
as sharp or as plentiful as we are used to during higher oppositions but it is
still worth recording with our sketch pads.

Increasingly I have been using my long focal length F15 Antares 105mm Achromatic
refractor for sketching observations, leaving the larger Newtonian for those rarer
steady nights. The long refractor is proving to be a bit of a “Seeing Beater”.

On the evening of June 1st/2nd 2007 I made such and observation and sketch and
hope you will agree it was worth the effort with some nice detail in the belts
evident and a couple of fine ovals too.

Start 00.00 end 00.15…. 2/6/07
Antares 105mm F15 refractor working at 163x with a Denk binoviewer, enhanced star
diagonal. Sketch made onto white paper with pre-drawn circles and black surround
using Derwent watercolour and pastel pencils. Image scanned but not enhanced.

Dale Holt

Jovial Giant

These are sketches created by hand and processed with Photoshop CS after being
scanned. I use graphite pencil and colored pencils on white paper.

Naturally some of these are based to looking at astrophotography, for more details.
Here are two sketches. The one is by hand and the other after being scanned and
processed with Photoshop.

With this method, I’ve created sketches of the Sun Prominences, and other objects of
the Deep Sky…

Basic equipment used: My Telescopes, ETX-125 5″/ LX 200R 8″/ and my
PST/Coronado/SolarMax 40/TMax Filter- Double Stacked.(For the Sun Sketches)

Scanner, EPSON PERFECTION 3490 PHOTO. ToUcam PRO
II-DSI-c..and my SBIG (recently) ST-2000XM.!!

Peter Desypris
Athens-Greece

Shadow on the cloudtops

Jupiter/Io Shadow Transit

With its large apparent diameter, turbulent belts and zones, and Great Red Spot,
Jupiter is a fascinating object to observe. This fascination goes up another notch
when one of the four Galilean moons makes a transit across the Jovian disk.

A transit occurs when the orbit of one of Jupiter’s moons takes it across the face
of the planet as seen from our vantage point here on Earth. The moon itself can be
hard to detect, but the inky black shadow that it casts on the planet’s cloud tops
is easily seen with most telescopes.

In the hour of time recorded in the sketch, Jupiter is rotating from left
(following) to right (preceding). Because the Great Red Spot happened to be visible
during the transit, the observer can get a sense of the incredible rotational speed
of this giant planet–one complete rotation about every ten hours!

The sketch was done at the eyepiece with 2B, HB, and 9B pencils on Strathmore 400
series 80 lb. paper.

Michael Rosolina

Observational Data:

Time: 23 May 2006 0300-0400 UT
Telescope: 8″ (20cm) SCT f/10
Magnification: 254x & 200x
Filters: Wratten #11, #56, #80A, & IL
Seeing: 4-5/10 (Pickering)
Transparency: 4/6
System II: 102° & 138°
Altitude: 35°
Diameter: 44.2″
Magnitude: -2.5