Scott Mellish Sketching or Drawing Competition

Thanks to Alexander Massey of The Astronomical Society of New South Wales for submitting the following invitation to our contributors and visitors:

Scott Mellish was a long time and valued member of the Astronomical Society of NSW. His knowledge of amateur astronomy and dedication to observation and sketching was unrivaled within the society and much admired by all those who knew him.

In honour of his memory, the ASNSW is proud to announce the inaugural Scott Mellish Amateur Sketching or Drawing Competition. This competition will be held annually at the South Pacific Star Party and aims to promote the art of Sketching and Drawing within the world-wide amateur astronomical community.

The competition is open to any member of an amateur astronomical society throughout the world and will be judged by popular vote during the star party on the 21st April 2012. Winners will be announced on the day.

Please visit The Scott Mellish Sketching or Drawing Competition to read further and to download the rules, entry form and entry template.

Pickering’s Floral Crater

Eratosthenes and Environs
Eratosthenes and Environs

December 4, 2011. 22:00-22:30UT. 200mm SCT f/10. 333x

Object Name: Eratosthenes Crater
Object Type: Lunar Crater
Location: Naxxar, Malta
Date: December 4, 2011
Media: Graphite pencil, white paper, blending stumps, erasor, GIMP.
Telescope: 8 inch f/ 10 SCT Dobsonian and 10mm eyepiece using binoviewer
Date: 12-04-2011 22:00-22:30 UT
Charles Galdies – http://znith-observatory.blogspot.com

Eratosthenes is a very dramatic and beautiful deep crater with a well-defined circular rim, terraced inner walls, a central mountain peak, but lacking its own ray system. The sketch, which is my third and best sketch of Eratosthenes so far, was done at relatively low sun-angles to bring out the shadow cast by the crater and adjacent western terminus of the Montes Apenninus mountain range. What makes this formation interesting to sketch is its linkage with the Apennine mountain chain.

In my sketch I tried to bring out the following features:

Rays from the prominent crater Copernicus to the south-west
Fine detail of the western terminus of the Montes Apenninus mountain range.
Numerous craterlets which typify the region around Eratosthenes
Internal wall terracing

Way back in 1924 Pickering noted dark patches in the crater that varied in a regular manner with time. He attributed these mobile patches to around 36 different flowering plants. Check out this old document http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1925PA…..33..629M/0000630.000.html written by one of his associates about this.

Vesta and the Hyades

Vesta and The Hyades
Vesta and The Hyades

Hey Artists!

Yes, this is a real old, restaurated sketch from the good old days, but it shows asteroid Vestas
movement across the beautiful Hyade star cluster over a observation time of 17 days.
I have org. 11 observations of Vestas positions, but 4 on this sketch. Info on the sketch.
I used pen and pencil on white paper (inverted).
Location: Trondheim, Norway.
I hope you like it!

Best wishes from : Per-Jonny Bremseth.

Viewing the Crater Line Linne

Crater Line Linne
Crater Line Linne (Move mouse over image to view labels)

This clear, cold evening provided from my location the opportunity to observe and sketch the straight line row of small craters from Linne A to Linne G. All five of these craters range from three to five kilometers in diameter. Other yet smaller craters were spotted during brief moments of good seeing but were not included in this sketch. Near the top center of the sketch the sixth bowl shaped crater Banting (5 km.) is clearly visible. South is up in the sketch so the Little Linne sequence from top to bottom is A ( 4 km.), B ( 5 km.), F ( 5 km.), H ( 3 km.), and G ( 5 km.). What especially caught my eye here on the floor of Mare Serentitatis were the fine, long shadows from each of these little craters.

Sketching:

For this sketch I used: Canson Black Ingres textured paper 8″ x12″, white and black tone pastel pencils and crayons, blending stumps, white pearl eraser

Telescope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian and 6 mm eyepiece for a magnification of 241x
Date: 01-30-2012 1:20-2:00 UT
Temperature: -4°C (24° F)
Clear, calm
Seeing: Pickering 5/10 – Antoniadi III
Co longitude: 347.3°
Lunation: 6.74 days
Illumination: 39.6%
Frank McCabe

Alien Sky

NGC 55
NGC 55

Object Name: NGC 55
Object Type: Galaxy
Location: Cherry Springs Dark Sky Park, Pennsylvania
Date: December 26, 2011
Media: Digitally simulated chalk over an inverted scan of the original in ball-pen.
NGC 55 and IC 1537 culminate over a distant tree line at latitude 42 North. 12” SCT with a diagonal, i.e. north is up and west is left. 125x. Visible asymmetry of the bright core in NGC 55. The fainter IC 1537 is in
actuality a star cloud in NGC 55. Due to low altitude it appears completely detached.

Messier 42

Messier 42 and 43
Messier 42 and 43

Object Type: Bright Nebula
Location: Campo Felice (Italy)
Date: 26 Novembre 2011
Media: Graphite and colored pencil on White paper, digitalized and inverted sketch

Instrument:
Dobson Meade LB 12″ F5
Eyepiece: Hyperion 24mm & Hyperion 13mm
Filters: UHC-S (Baader) , O-III (Astronomik) , H-BETA (Astronomik).
Mag.Limit: 6.3
Seeing: 3/5 Antoniadi

Clear Skies To everyone!

Stefano

Sketches of Jupiter from Polaris Observatory

Sketches of Jupiter - December 3, 2011
Sketches of Jupiter - December 3, 2011

Dear Asod,

I send you here a montage of many sketches of Jupiter made by a group of amateur astronomers in Polaris Observatory, Hungary, Budapest.
We have monthly tutorials for anyone who is interested and we are going through all types of objects. When it came to the planets, unfortunately the weather was awful, so we decided to make a tutorial of sketching the Jupiter from a photo done a few days before. Here we got, everyone could practice observing and sketching. Even those joined who have never sketched before, and all of them suceeded, as you can see.

The sketches were made by: Szabolcs Kiss, Attila Pilisi, Time Kovesdi Farkasne, Peter Molnar, Ervin Katona, Viktor Farkas, Tamas Jakabfi.
Media used: graphite pencils and pastel pencil used on white paper
Date & time: 3rd December 2011 (from a photo made a few days before).
Place: Polaris Observatory, Hungary, Budapest

Clear Skies,
Judit Hannak

Sporadic Meteor over the Castle of Forcalqueiret

Sporadic Meteor
Sporadic Meteor

January 23, 2012 at 7:37 p.m. local time, I saw this meteor fall. It seemed to fall on the castle of Forcalqueiret in Provence, already so ruined …
This meteor belongs to the sporadic family, no known shower exist at this time of the year. Slow, it has about 3 seconds to disintegrate by emitting a beautiful ocher yellow light.

My sketch was made ​​ naked eye in the cold of this early winter evening. We can see the sky from the Pleiades to the feet of Orion, passing through the Hyades in the constellation Taurus. I tried to take account of different colors like Betelgeuse and Rigel, respectively red and blue. The Great Nebula in Orion also shows a little pink shade than the surrounding stars.

I made this sketch on white paper with caracole pencils, using directly the correct reverse colour black for white, blue for the meteor, light blue for Betelgeuse and M42, and yellow for Rigel. The final work is to invert the scanned sketch.

Michel Deconinck

Web : http://astro.aquarellia.com

H-Alpha Sun – January 18, 2012

H-Alpha Sun - January 18, 2012
H-Alpha Sun - January 18, 2012
H-Alpha Sun - January 18, 2012
H-Alpha Sun - January 18, 2012

Location: Freising-Lerchenfeld, Bavaria, Germany
Media: graphite pencil, knife, digital tools (Minolta Dimage Z2 Camera)
positiv and negativ
Telescope: Coronado PST (40/400mm)
Ocular: 9mm SW 66°

My webside: www.dersonnenzeichner.de

Kind regards

Michael Wendl