Category: Naked eye

The Reason for the Messier Marathon

April 2 to 3 participated in the Messier Marathon without a star chart.
The weather is not good all night, but one hour before twilight sky cleared.
While frantically looking for the star, suddenly the day was bright…

What is the reason for the Messier Marathon?
Just before twilight of breathtaking suspense.
Maybe it’s the reason for the Marathon.

Material : White paper, Stick pastel, Colored pencil

Taurus in the Year 1054

I send you an illustration of what happened in Taurus in the year 1054 A.D.
This is the supernova which created the “Crab Nebula” (M.1).
Nearby to NE is the cresent moon. On old drawings on stones and so on,
the cresent moon was there when the SN exploded on 4. July this year.
More info on my sketch!
I used pen and pencil on white paper and inverted.

Best wishes for clear sky, Per-Jonny Bremseth

Phaeton’s Falling Particles

Object : Meteor Shower from 3200 Phaeton(Geminids)
Date : December 13/14 2010
Time : 03:15-04:15 LST / 10:15-11:15 UT
Location : Wickenburg, Arizona USA
Medium : Charcoal pencils, white paper, paintbrush used as stump, Windows Paint for inversion, polishing and removing unwanted artifacts
Detector : Visual observation
Magnitude : Varying from 5 to -2
Weather : Moonless sky, Wispy cirrus clouds that soon dissipated, calm winds,somewhat chilly in the mid 40’s

Comments :

The Geminids for this season didn’t dissapoint ! As you can see, in my opinion, it surpassed the Zenithal Hourly Rate (ZHR) from that of this past August’s Perseids. In this one hour time frame sketch, I jotted down over 80 blazing streaks of the falling particles. Obviously, this didn’t include those that fell behind me or the ones that went unnoticed. It easily matched the confirmed rate of 120 (ZHR) or even more !!

In the sketch, I tried to cover a vast area of sky to show not only the radiant and its host constellation but also where the ‘shooting stars’ will be falling. In most cases they appear to fall a good distance away from the radiant. I chose the area with Canis Major,Orion,Taurus, Auriga, M44, M45 and high above is of course Gemini. While most of the meteors burned brightly white/yellow-or so they appeared, there was one that I caught high over my head with a yellow/green color! This meteor had a ‘double streak’ !!
I could distinctly see two greenish trails with a gap in between as it vaporized across the sky. A rather peculiar sight to witness, perhaps some of you out there have seen them too.

Well, it sure was worthed watching this shower all the way into the dawn hours and leaving me a happy camper. 😉

Wishing you dark and clear skies,

Juanchin

Fire from the Twins

Object Name Geminids
Object Type Meteor shower
Location My own backyard, Deventer, The Netherlands
Date Dec. 14th, 01.15UT – 03.00UT
Media Black and white pastels on navy blue paper

Last night the rich meteor shower of the Geminids peaked (actually it was around 14.00UT this afternoon, but the most favorable time to watch it from Europe was during the dark early hours of 14 december). Once again I decided to make a pastel sketch, just like I did during the Perseid shower last August. I used the same method: I made a very global sketch of the starfield I was going to view, including the obstruction caused by the roof and a tree on a dark blue piece of paper. In the field during the observation period I drew every meteor in place with a white pastel pencil.

But the shower was so rich I hardly got time to plot every meteor in the drawing. At given times there were 4 meteors per 10 seconds! I did not count them, but I must have seen over 150 meteors (incl. the ones outside the drawing’s field of view) in the 2 hours of observing time. Incredible! Around 40 of them appeared in the area of the drawing. I observed from my own backyard from 01.15 UT until 03.15 UT. Skies were clear during this whole period, but light pollution got a nasty boost from the snow that fell earlier that evening. NELM was around 5.

Kind regards,
Roel Weijenberg
www.roelblog.nl

Midday’s Moon

Hi,
This is my october sketch of moon with naked eye. On october 29, at noon I was looking out the window and thinking: “wow, I must draw it”. The moon this day was over the buildings where I live. The roofs and chimneys was beautiful illuminated by sunlight…So I have drawn it 🙂
This sketch is created with dry pastels on blue paper.

object: moon with naked eye
location: Katowice, Poland
date: october 29, 2010
technique: dry pastels on blue paper

Katarzyna Kurdek

Suburban Moonrise

The 25th of October I was doing the dishes when the rising Moon took my attention. Quick I took my pastel pencils and put from my kitchen the scene on paper. It was a lot of fun blending the pastel with my fingers (one finger for black, one finger for yellow, one finger for blue, etc…). The symmetry between the two sources of light (the Moon and a lamp-post) was a beautiful sight.
When you live in suburban region you always see the celestial bodies rise later than in reality. The roofs of the houses around me replace the natural horizon. And what a pity human kind is replacing our natural lightning by artificial ones.
Hope you like it.

25/10/2010, 18.30-19.00 UT, 92.7%, 18 days
Clear skies
Jef De Wit

Object Name: Moon (18.0 lunar days, 92.7% illumination)
Object Type: moon
Location: Hove, Belgium (51°09’ N 4°28’ E)
Date and time: 25 October 2010 18.30-19.00 UT
Equipment: naked eye
Medium: pastel pencils on art paper

Night of the Perseids

Object : Meteor Shower (Perseids)
Date : August 12/13 2010
Time : 12:55-01:55 LST / 07:55-08:55 UT
Location : Harquahala Mountain Range, Arizona USA
Medium : Charcoal pencils, white paper, paintbrush used as stump
Detector : Visual observation
Magnitude : Varying from 5 to -2 give or take a notch
Weather : Clear Moonless skies, calm winds and temperature in the mid 70’s

Comments :

I could’ve titled it “It’s A Dry Shower” but the Southwest humor
might not have gone far beyond Arizona. Anyway, lets drop the
umbrella and enjoy what was for some, one of the best showers ever
both in spectacle and rate or number of shooting stars. Data from
the International Meteor Organization (IMO) indicated that the Zenith Hourly Rate
(ZHR) peaked at 140 meteors per hour! From the
various meteor showers occuring throughout the year, the Perseids
in my opinion, are the “Best of Show” in that category.

The young waxing Moon along with a parade of planets went under the
horizon just in perfect time, a determining factor that helps in
bringing out even the faintest glowing granules of cometary debris.
They say to bring along a partner for otherwise it can get lonely
and quiet at times. My helpful assistant and wife was with me all
through the night. Staring at the sky for prolonged periods can be
easier by casual conversation with some company. My first hour
started at 9 pm LST. For the next 60 minutes a total of 14 Perseid
meteor streaks was all I recorded on my notes 3 were sporadics. The
following hour, at 10 pm LST, I ended with a count of 19 Perseids.
10 were from a combination of sporadic and Capricornids. At 11:15
pm LST, after a small break, I started the count again. This next
hour gave me a total of 39 Perseids.I decided at this time to get
my pad and pencils along with a pre-plotted star chart. All I had
to do next was doodle in everything that the sky would throw at me
including an incredibly bright Milky Way in the background.During
the next hour from 12:55 to 01:55 am LST, over 52 meteors were
immortalized on my sketch pad. A good deal of them left persistent
trains or smoke trails that soon vanished or dispersed with the
wind. Some of those that burned the brightest to a magnitude of -2
left their trail glowing with iridescent colors, the most
noticeable was a neon greenish hue. This color is attributed to a
meteor with a high composition of magnesium according to Astronomy magazine.
To the unaided eye, the persistent trains seemed to last
about 2 to 4 seconds in the air. However, I grabbed the binoculars
and noticed that the gaseous trail was still lingering far longer
than a few seconds. Those persistent trains lasted on some
occasions up to 10 to 15 seconds up until they finally broke or
disintegrated into nothingness.

I can add more blah,blah,blah but this is good enough for now!
Wishing you dark and clear skies,

Juanchin