Astronomy Sketch of the Day – Page 135 – Drawings and sketches of an astronomical nature

Moon visits the Scorpion

On holiday in France I witnessed a beautiful conjunction between the Moon and the constellation Scorpius. Sketching the background with a pastel pencil was the most difficult task to do. I think I will use a chalk pastel next time for a smoother result. There is also still some work on the stars (I almost never draw naked eye stars). On the other hand the glow around the Moon looks very nice. Hope you like my holiday souvenir.

Clear skies
Jef De Wit

Object Name: Moon and constellation Scorpius
Object Type: moon and asterism
Location: Louroux-Bourbonnais, France (46°33’ N 2°51’ E)
Date and time: 7 August 2011 around 20.15 UT
Equipment: naked eye
Medium: color pastel pencils on black paper, Antares and Moon were redraw digital, process with Paint

The Silver Coin

The “Sculptor Galaxy” (or slightly less familiar – “Silver Coin” galaxy) is one of the most bright and striking galaxies, coming second only after objects like M31, M33, M81. It’s a close, large (almost as large as the Moon), and almost edge-on spiral galaxy. In the eyepiece – the “Sculptor” has a long elliptical shape, and slightly assymetrical. Several darker and brighter filaments are clearly visible around the brighter central part, even in moderate instruments.

Object Name : NGC 253 – the Sculptor Galaxy .
Object Type : Spiral galaxy.
Location: Negev desert, Israel, ~6.7 mag. sky.
Date: 5-6/08/2011 ; 03:30.
Instrument: 200mm F/5 Orion (US) Newtonian, 13mm Vixen LVW eyepiece.
Media Graphite pencil sketch on a white paper. Inverted and processed in Photoshop.

Fragmenting of C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake)

Hey Artists!

I send you “fragmenting of C/ 1996 B2 Hyakutake”.
For visual observers much happened in the coma of this nearby, fastmoving great comet.
With a scope you could see the false nucleus with a bright, fan-shaped structure tailward and great shockbows sunward! The outer part of the bows were faint, so the sketch is enhanced. More info on the sketch.
I used crayons on black paper.
From Trondheim, Norway.

Best wishes, Per-Jonny Bremseth.

Kemble’s Cascade

Object Type: Asterism
Location:Seyedabad-Firoozkooh,Iran (35º 38′ N , 52º 22′ E)
Date: August 5, 2011
Time: 2:00 Local Time (+3:30 GMT)
Media: Graphite pencil on white paper,Inverted in Photoshop

Optic: 80 ED APO Refractor Telescope
Focal Length: 600 mm
Eyepiece: 42mm Wide view five elements

Best Regards and Clear Sky
Mona Sorayaei

Kemble’s Cascade, located in the constellation Camelopardalis, is an asterism — a pattern created by unrelated stars. It is an apparent straight line of more than 20 colorful 5th to 10th magnitude stars over a distance of approximately five moon diameters, and the open cluster NGC 1502 can be found at one end.

It was named by Walter Scott Houston in honor of Father Lucian J. Kemble (1922–1999), a Franciscan Friar and amateur astronomer who wrote a letter to Houston about the asterism, describing it as “a beautiful cascade of faint stars tumbling from the northwest down to the open cluster NGC 1502” that he had discovered while sweeping the sky with a pair of 7×35 binoculars.

Houston was so impressed that he wrote an article on the asterism that appeared in his “Deep Sky Wonders” column in the astronomy magazine Sky & Telescope in 1980, in which he named it “Kemble’s Cascade”.

NGC 6960 – Veil Nebula West

Type: Nebula (Supernova Remnant)
Constellation: Cygnus.
Observing Location: Talaveruela de la Vera. Cáceres. SPAIN.
Date: Jule 10, 2011
Material used: graphite pencil on white paper. Sketch processed with GIMP 2.
Telescope: Celestron S/C 8″ Mount Cgt5
Eyepiece: 31 mm Hyperion (65X).
Filter: UHC
NELM: 5,87 Temp.: 19ºC

More information about the sketch and NGC 6960 in:
http://astrodibujo.blogspot.com/

A Small Cloud in the Book of Fixed Stars

Objects name:
-Andromeda Galaxy(Messier 31/NGC224).
-Messier 32/NGC221,it is a satellite of Andromeda Galaxy.
-Messier110/NGC205,it is a Satellite of Andromeda galaxy.
Object type:
-M31: Spiral galaxy(SA(s)b).
-M32:Dwarf elliptical galaxy (cE2).
-M110:Dwarf elliptical galaxy(E5pec).
Location:Seyed abad-Firuzkuh-Iran(35º 38′ N , 52º 22′ E) .
Date:2011/07/01.
Time:2:30 local time (+3:30 GMT).
Media:Graphic pencil white paper-inverted in photoshop.
Equipment:200mm Dobsonian telescope-f/6-focal length 1200,Sky glow filter.
Eyepiece:30mm, Field:80º.
Conditions:Clear with some Light pollution.

The earliest recorded observation of the Andromeda Galaxy was in 964 CE by the Persian astronomer, Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (Azophi), who described it as a “small cloud” in his Book of “Fixed Stars”. Other star charts of that period have it labeled as the Little Cloud.

Clear sky
Banafsheh Yaghoubi

The Path of Vesta

Object Name: Vesta
Object Type: Asteroid
Location: Itajobi, SP, Brazil
21°19’W
41°03’S
+453m
Date: 21-30/07/2011 (all sketches around 02h00 U.T.)
Media: 2B 0.5mm graphite pencil on white paper, scanned so inverted
Instrument: Binoculars Celestron 10×50 (7°)
Observer: Rodrigo Pasiani Costa

From July 21st to 30th I could observe the brighest asteroid, Vesta, crossing the night sky. Night after night it appeared higher in the sky, always as bright as the surrounding brighest stars, showing its path among them. It was the first time I observed an asteroid, and I didn’t know they move so quickly.
This is an animation with all the sketches, one after another, showing Vesta’s trip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up29hcX2z3Y
I hope you enjoy the sketch, and the animation. Thanks you all, and dark skies!
Rodrigo Pasiani Costa

Crater Clavius

Among the large craters of the lunar southern highlands, a nearly 4 billion year old impact stood out on this evening just after local sunset. This crater is 231 km.diameter Clavius. Clavius is blanketed with a sizable number of craters and numerous craterlets. At the center of this large crater are the reduced remains of the once regal central peaks. The atmosphere was not steady enough to pick out cratelets less than 3 km. never the less, the view was pleasing. Crater Clavius is famous for its semicircular crater sequence of decreasing size beginning with 56 km. Rutherfurd at the inner southeastern wall and continuing with 28 km. D, 21 km. C, 13 km N, 12 km J and 7.5 km JA. The north-northeastern rim of Clavius has a large crater resting upon it and most of its rim is just catching the light of sunrise. This 52 km. diameter crater is Porter. Much of the floor of crater Clavius remains smooth which implies the flow of melted rock in the past. Some geologists speculate it is from some of the ejecta cast outward during the formation of the Orientale basin. Some small secondary crater chains point back in that direction.

Sketching:
For this sketch I used: Canson sketching paper , 9”x12”, white and black Conte’ pastel pencils and blending stumps. Brightness was adjusted after scanning.

Telescope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian and 6 mm eyepiece 241x
Date: 7-10-2011 01:15-03:00 UT
Temperature: 27°C (80°F)
Partly to mostly cloudy, breezy
Seeing: Antoniadi III-IV
Co longitude: 21.4°
Lunation: 8.69 days
Illumination: 70.1 %

Frank McCabe

A Sculptural Sketch

This is a “sculptural sketch” created at the eyepiece of my telescope. It started as a flattened rectangular slab of modeling clay about 1/4” inch thick and 11” by 13” in size. As I observed, I laid down thin strips of clay to form the glacis around each crater. I then used a butter knife to excavate the crater floors. I tried to keep in mind the true topographical relief of each feature. For example, Aristillus, the deepest crater is merely 5/16” deep from rim crest to floor. I “normalized” the sculpture by imagining what these features would look like if I were to see the view from directly above the area. The next morning, I sanded white and black dry pastels into a powder that was blended and applied by sponge to approximate the albedo features. What really surprised and delighted me was that despite the shallowness of the surface details, when the light source was adjusted to approximate the phase, the highlights and shadows created a very realistic scene. As I was working, I remembered Nasmyth and Carpenter’s beautiful plaster sculptures of the Moon for their classic The Moon: Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite (1885); page 114 shows their exquisite sculpture of this area.

Sculptural sketch details:

Subject: Archimedes and environs Rukl: 12, 22
Date: 7-31-09 Time: 0540-0730 UT
Location: Jacumba, California
Antoniadi III Weather: Clear and calm
Telescope: 12” Meade LX200 SCT with UHTC
Binoviewer: Denkmeier Model DII SCT 2X
Eyepieces: Pentax 20mm XW
Magnification: 152X and 305X
Medium: Modeling clay sculpture with dry pastel powder
Sculpture size: 11” x 13”

Messier 5

Here is my sketch of the globular cluster M5. The sketch was done at the eyepiece June 19, 2011 at 2253DST using my 200mm dob and an 8mm EP yeilding 150x magnification. I used graphite on white paper and then reversed the image and cleaned it up in Corel Paintshop Pro. I was really struck by the three dimensional quality of this cluster when viewed with averted vision. The fainter stars on the NW edge of the core POP into view and really seem to be well in front of the cluster’s core of unresolved stars. The sketch was done from my backyard observatory in Orleans, Ontario, Canada.

Clear skies,
Gordon Webster