Astronomy Sketch of the Day – Page 284 – Drawings and sketches of an astronomical nature

Little Man Big

The Homunculus Nebula is one of my personal favorites when it comes to southern
hemisphere deep sky objects. I was favored with good seeing conditions one evening
and attempted a sketch using a soft lead pencil.

The Homunculus (Latin for “little man”) surrounds the notoriously variable star Eta
Carinae. Using a 4mm Plossl with a twelve inch f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain (~760X), this
peculiar reflection nebula resembled a pale yellow bipolar planetary nebula. At
times, I thought the bipolar lobes appeared as a weak reddish color but I could
never hold the sight long enough to be certain. The disc was quite irregular in
shape and displayed much subtle detail. Eta Carinae was also of a subtle yellowish
tint. Indeed, Eta is included in the list of “red” stars compiled by George Chambers
back in the late 19th century.

The ASOD drawing was copied from the original sketch using Photoshop. The airbrush,
blurring and dodging tools were used.

Dave Riddle
Smyrna, Georgia USA

Superb celestial Sombrero

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

Gassendi Sunrise

As the 11 day old waxing gibbous moon approached the meridian, I was able to easily search the terminator in a standing position at the eyepiece to find a suitable sketching target. Target located, I began my sketch near the end of evening twilight. The 110 km. diameter floor fractured crater Gassendi was right on the terminator. The central peak was just touched by morning sunlight as were the tallest portions of the western rim across the blackness of the chasmic floor. The unilluminated portion of the south rim is tilted and facing the center of Mare Humorum. This large 3.7 billion year old crater has on its rim to the north a 33 km. crater known as Gassendi A which is mimicking the rim illumination of the former save the central peak. A small portion of the eastern wall of Gassendi B (26 km.) was also visible north and west of A.

Sketching:
For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper, white and black Conte’ pastel pencils and a blending stump. Brightness was slightly decreased after scanning.
Telescope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian and 6mm eyepiece 241x Date: 6-26-2007 2:15-3:10 UT
Temperature: 26° C (78° F)
Hazy, 88% humidity
Seeing: Antoniadi II- III
Colongitude: 40.2 °
Lunation: 10.96 days
Illumination: 81.3 %Frank McCabe

Even craters have their faults

Here is my impression of the Lunar Crater Taruntius. It was sketched with a #2HB
0.5mm mechanical pencil on Strathmore Wind power Sketching Paper. Other pertinent
details are on the sketch itself. What caught my eye with this particular lunar
feature was the ring of hills wrapping around the central peak.

Jason Aldridge
Florida, USA

Cosmic dust devil

I recently located a pencil drawing of Comet Hale-Bopp in one of old observing
notebooks and decided to reinterpret my hasty sketch using the Photoshop airbrush.

The drawing was made using Tim Puckett’s 24″ reflector with a 55mm Plossl (~90x)
while the comet was drawing close to the horizon. Despite the comet’s low elevation,
I noted a dust tail about five degrees long and a four degree ion tail. The
pseudo-nucleus was almost as bright as Alpha Aurigae (Capella)!

The coma displayed three prominent hoods. The innermost hood appeared to an
astonishing “geyser” jetting from and curving around the nucleus . I can only hope
that the drawing comes close to capturing this amazing feature (I almost named the
sketch “A Bad Drawing of a Great Comet”).

The original drawing was made on the evening of March 29th, 1997.

Dave Riddle
Smyrna, Georgia USA

Sparkling Lagoon

14th June, 2007., around 21:00 UT
Petrova gora, Croatia

Last night I had another opportunity to observe. But this time, we went
to the Petrova gora, mountain maybe 1000 ft high, about 40 miles South
from the Zagreb and 20 miles South-East from the Karlovac (pop: 60 000).
Light pollution is still evident on northern horizon but to the South,
skies are beautiful. NELM near zenith was 6.10, not much difference from
the best night in my backyard (NELM 5.80) but big difference is that
there is no glare from street lamps and glow from nearby populated
places so sky is much darker. Watching MW composed from many clouds,
with few bright spots (M24, M8, M25), seeing M7 by naked eye is
wonderful feeling. Statement that there is no substitute for dark skies
hold very well. Of course, I used this opportunity to make more
sketches. I hope you will like results.

My process of creating sketches goes like this:
First, I observe and draw field sketch, full of notes, corrections and
other helpful stuff. After returning to house, I redraw all sketches to
include missing details, remove errors and to get better contrast under
white light. Next step is scanning of sketches. Afters scanning, I do
further adjustments of contrast in the Photoshop and add circle
representing that represents FOV. Last thing is description and saving
sketch in .tff and .jpg format.

I’m sketching on plain A4 paper with graphite pencils of different
hardness.

Vedran Vrhovac

Eight views of the Great Opposition of 2003

This series of sketches covers my observations of Mars around the opposition
of 2003. Various telescopes were used including a 105mm Astro-Physics apo, a
200mm TEC Fluorite apo, a 13-inch Merz Refractor (circa. 1859, Herstmonceux,
Sussex, England) and a 28-inch Grubb Photo-visual Refractor (circa. 1893,
Royal Observatory, Greenwich, England). Simple graphite sketches with colour
notes were carried out at the eyepiece, generally over a 30 minute to one
hour period, these coloured pencil sketches then being drawn as soon as
possible afterwards. Interestingly the same sort of view is distilled out of
each observation regardless of the aperture being used!

Though the view didn’t appear to change very much from one evening to
another, the shrinking southern polar cap and changing phase of Mars is
distinctly seen over the three month observing period. My personal challenge
for the current Mars apparition is to catch the gibbous phase BEFORE
December 2007 opposition as well as afterwards.

The disc diameter of the sketches (image flipped to the correct orientation)
is approx. 5cm, and south is up.

Sally Russell

Fractured floor and a rim shot

Crater Taruntius with Cameron on its Rim

Between southern Mare Tranquillitatius and northwestern Mare Fecundatatius lies the Copernican period crater Taruntius (57 km). This crater was some distance from the terminator but with surrounding smaller craters showing deep shadows, it is clear that Taruntius is a shallow crater. Note the deep shadow in Cameron (12 km) on the northwest rim of Taruntius. In addition to Cameron other rim features include breaches to the north and south along the rim and interesting rough ramparts to the lava floor beyond the crater especially southward. This floor fractured crater presents a small central peak surrounded by dark ash deposits from volcanic activity on the crater floor.

Date: 6-20-2007 1:15-1:50 UT
Temperature: 21° C (70° F)
Clear, calm
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Colongitude: 326.2 °
Lunation: 4.9 days
Illumination: 26.6 %

Frank McCabe

Our galactic dance partner

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

Cat’s Eye in a dracon’s hand

Cat’s Eye Nebula

One of the better known bright summer planetary nebulas in the constellation of Draco is NGC 6543. This blue-green planetary appears to be about one third of a minute of arc across, although its “outer corona” brings it out to about six arc minutes. The brightest part of this “outer corona” is IC 4677. None of this outer region can be seen from my urban site. The glow around the dying, hot, type O central star (or perhaps close binary pair) appears homogenous. None of the curlicue compressed gas loops were visible that can be seen in photographs. Some darkness was seen around the tenth magnitude central star. At a visual magnitude of 8.1 and at a distance of somewhere between 3300-3600 light years, this thousand year old planetary nebula looks great in telescopes much smaller than 18 inches.

Sketching:

Date and Time: 6-17-2007, 518-5:50 UT
Scope: 18” f/5 Dobson Ian. 12mm, 9mm eyepieces 191x, 254x
8”x12” white sketching paper, B, 2B graphite pencils, light brown colored pencil for nebula, scanned and inverted, contrast mean value adjustment using Imageenhance, star magnitude adjustments using Paint
Seeing: Pickering 7/10
Transparency: poor 2/5
Nelm: 3.9

Frank McCabe