Astronomy Sketch of the Day – Page 224 – Drawings and sketches of an astronomical nature

Prominence Prayer

Solar Prominences February 23, 2009
Sketch and Details by Erika Rix

Solar prominences in h-alpha, eastern limb

PCW Memorial Observatory, Zanesville, Ohio USA
Erika Rix

DS 60mm Maxscope, LXD75, 21-7mm Zhumell
Sketch created scopeside with black Strathmore Artagain paper, white Conte’ crayon and pencil, white Prang watercolor pencil.

Temp: -2.6° C, Humidity 66%
Seeing: Wilson 4, Transparency: very poor
Partly cloudy, winds 13mph from NW
Alt: 33.2, Az: 144.1

A fairly tall prominence stood out on the eastern limb that looked like a pair of hands loosely pressed together in prayer. Par for the course on these larger delicate features, they look almost detached until you concentrate on that area for a more in depth look. This is the prominence I concentrated on for the observation sketch. There was another smaller prom just north on the western limb close to a position angle of 290-300 degrees. It consisted of two arches messed together with small spikes on the limb next to them. Another slender prominence worth mentioning was located on the southern limb.

A thick, squat filament was just inside the limb about 45 degrees further south than the sketched prominence on the eastern limb.

Orion Nebula and Its Companion

M42 and M43, Orion Nebula and its companion
Sketch and Details by Frank McCabe

M42/ M43 Orion Nebula and Its Companion

Everyone that has taken a telescope or pair of binoculars outdoors to view the heavens on a clear winter night in the northern hemisphere has seen the Orion nebula. It is that fuzzy star in the middle of the hunter’s sword. M42 the “Great nebula” is a stellar nursery and emission nebula that shines as bright as a 4th magnitude star while its smaller companion on the other side of the intervening obscuring dust is M43 shining at 9th magnitude. Soon the nebula will be past the south meridian point before it is fully dark. So now is the time to take your last good looks before it’s too late; spring will be here soon.
On this night I decided it was time to try and make a sketch of this winter gem. I have made a few crude sketches in the past and know this is a tough target to capture as it appears in the eyepiece. I started by sketching the stars and lightly outlining the bright parts of the nebula with a 2H pencil. After much erasing and repositioning of stars I shaded in the bright to faint nebula gradually until it looked to be a reasonable match to the eyepiece view. After two and a half hours I consider the sketch finished. Averted vision helped with the outer faint regions.
It was a slow process but a fun challenge at the same time.

Sketching

Date and Time: 2-15-2009, 1:10-3:20 UT
Scope: 10” f/5.7 Dobsonian. 21mm Hyperion eyepiece 69x
8”x12” white CCP sketching paper, 2H B, 2B graphite pencils, blending stump, erasers, scanned and inverted, contrast and brightness were slightly adjusted at the scanner
Temperature: -3 °C (26 °F), calm
Seeing: very good Pickering 8/10
Transparency: good 3/5

Frank McCabe

The Shiny Shockwave Around the Moon

Moon with Halo
Sketch and Details by Aleksander Cieśla

Hi!
Tonight I saw an impressive halo around the Moon. It looks like a shiny shockwave on the shining clouds.

Sketch information:
Object: Moon (94% of full) and halo
Scope: Naked eye
Place: Poland, Wroclaw – near city center
Weather: Quick passing clouds. Seeing 6/10. Light Pollution.
Date: 7 February 2009.
Technique: White pastels on black paper
Tooling: N/A

When NGC 6826 Doesn’t Blink

NGC 6826, The Blinking Planetary Nebula
Sketch and Details by Serge Vieillard, translation by Frank McCabe

Our club organized a trip for visual telescope use at the observatory to Astroqueyras of St Véran. Six members of the group for 9 days (from the 18 to 26 of October, 2008) observed during the pre-winter period, with a program focused mainly on planetary nebulae. These were our preferred targets using the 9 m focal length Cassegrain telescope of 62 cm aperture.
Weather conditions were not optimal, but each period of good seeing was used to the maximum.
We familiarized ourselves with the instrument the first night and pointed it at obvious targets…. We spent a considerable length of time on NGC 6826, the blinking planetary with a blue in color at magnifications up to 1900x. With this instrument at these high magnifications, the central star does not blink and the central shell shows a very special form with an edge almost straight. The external hull shows zones that are nearly symmetrical and alternating between bright and dark but aspect slightly different…. Some details of contours and nuances ideally complement this observation.

Young by the Moon’s Standards

Lunar Crater Harpalus
Sketch and Details by Szklenár Tamás

Object Name: Harpalus crater

Object Type: Lunar crater

Location: Hungary, Csabacsüd, 20° 39′ 07″ 46° 49′ 29″
Date: 2009.02.06., UT 21:00- UT 21:20
Telescope: 80mm/900 refractor, 6mm Planetary eyepiece, 150x magnification

Harpalus is an exciting object on the Moon, I made the sketch with graphite pen to white paper. The 20 minutes of the drawing was only the making of the base lines and colors – shadow intensity. The next day I finished it by my table, this was about an hour long drawing.

Szklenár Tamás

Dazzling Goddess

Planet Venus
Sketch and Details by Carlos E. Hernandez

I made an observation of Venus on February 10, 2009 (00:30 U.T.) using my 9-inch (23-cm) F/13.5 Maksutov-Cassegrain (248x) under average to good seeing conditions (5-7/10). The central meridian was 271.7 degrees West, phase 35% (p 0.350), and apparent magnitude of -4.6. I was using a magenta (Wratten 30) filter, enhances both red and blue features and darkens green ones, to bring out the subtle albedo features over the Venusian cloud tops. I was able to make out delicate albedo features over the visible globe and especially along the terminator. Obviously they became more apparent when the seeing steadied for brief moments.

A digital image produced using Photoshop CS3.

Carlos

Celestial Continent

NGC 7000, The North American Nebula
Sketch and Details by Jeremy Perez

Observation Notes

From a dark location with a good pair of binoculars, this rich, starry field is filled with a tapestry of nebulosity. While staying at Flying W Guest Ranch in Oklahoma, I found myself sitting under the stars one clear, dark evening. I had just finished a sketch of The False Comet, and turned my binoculars to the North America Nebula. I spent enough time putting a crick in my neck to appreciate the enjoyable shape from which it gets its name. To work on my sketch however, I needed a more comfortable position. So I attached my Mirror Mount and relaxed for a nice long observation. The mirrored image took some of the spice out of the view, since the North America shape was flipped, but if you’ve seen images of it a million times, that little twist can be a nice way to help keep the observation honest!

After drawing the star field, I got down to the business of finding the contours of the nebula. The Gulf of Mexico appeared to have both a strong, shallow boundary, and a softer, deeper boundary. The Central America leg had the most pronounced edge to it. To the north, within the Canadian section, there appeared to be three very subtle dark fingers, reaching down like glacial valleys. Across the abyss of LDN 935, the Pelican Nebula made a very faint appearance. When added to the glow of NGC 7000, these two nebulae give a saguaro cactus shaped appearance to the dark nebula that divides them. Finally, I noted the orange and yellow-orange embers of four stars burning across the beautiful field. Don’t pass this majestic sight up if you are under a dark sky with binoculars this time of year.

Rather than shade the nebula ‘in the field’, I drew contour lines to note progressively brighter regions of the nebula. I traced and re-mirrored the sketch when I got home and took my time shading it under well-lit conditions, using the contour sketch as a template. I prepared the sketch on a 9″ x 12″ sheet of vellum bristol using a chamois to apply charcoal shading. I used my kneaded eraser to mold the boundaries and keep them true to the contour drawing.

I should also note that I attempted a naked-eye sketch of the Cygnus Milky Way, including the North America Nebula, but was unable to come close to completing it. The complex structure of the Milky Way and this nebula were difficult to tease apart, but I hope to try again and document how this object appears to the naked eye.

Object Information

Situated three degrees west of the brilliant star Deneb, the North America Nebula (NGC 7000) is a visual test of dark skies. Readily photographed, it can be a challenging visual target unless conditions are dark and clear. It is also quite large, and best seen in whole with wide field instruments, especially binoculars. NGC 7000 is part of a larger nebula complex that includes IC 5067 and IC 5070 which is known as the Pelican Nebula. This emission nebula is bisected by a large dark nebula catalogued as LDN 935. A finger of this dark nebula is responsible for the well-defined ‘Gulf of Mexico’ region. If the star illuminating the emission nebula is Deneb, then the complex would reside about 1800 light years away and span a width of 100 light years.

NGC 7000 (The North America Nebula) was discovered by Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel in 1786 and is also known as Sh2-117, LBN 373, H V-37?, h 2096, GC 4621. IC 5067 is also catalogued as LBN 353 and IC 5070 is also catalogued as LBN 350.

Subject North America Nebula (NGC 7000), Pelican Nebula (IC 5067, IC 5070), and LDN 935
Classification NGC 7000, IC 5067 and IC 5070: Emission Nebula
LDN 935: Dark Nebula
Position* Cygnus:
NGC 7000: [RA: 21:01:48.0 / Dec: +44:12:00]
IC 5067: [RA: 20:47:48.0 / Dec: +44:22:00]
IC 5070: [RA: 20:50:48.0 / Dec: +44:21:00]
LDN 935: [RA: 20:56:54.5 / Dec: +43:52:00]
Size* NGC 7000: 100′ x 60′
IC 5067: 25′ x 10′
IC 5070: 60′ x 50′
LDN 935: 150′ x 40′
Brightness* Unspecified
Date/Time AUG 05, 2008 – 01:00 AM CST
(AUG 05, 2008 – 06:00 UT)
Observing Loc. Flying W Guest Ranch, Sayre, Oklahoma, USA
Instrument 15 x 70 Oberwerk Binoculars
Eyepieces/Mag. –
Seeing 4/10
Transparency ~6.5 NELM
*Sources NGCIC Project; Wikipedia

Plasma Arches on the Western Limb

Solar Prominences on February 13, 2009
Sketch and Details by Erika Rix

2009 Feb 13, 1600UT – 1700UT

Solar prominences in h-alpha, western limb

PCW Memorial Observatory, Zanesville, Ohio USA
Erika Rix

DS 60mm Maxscope, LXD75, 21-7mm Zhumell
Sketch created scopeside with black Strathmore Artagain paper, white Conte’ crayon and pencil, white Prang watercolor pencil.

Temp: 3° C, Humidity 60%
Seeing: Wilson 3, Transparency: poor
Scattered, winds 7mph from NNW
Alt: 34.4, Az: 159.2

Approximately 30° inward from the eastern limb, a crescent-shaped plage was seen with a dark dot during my h-alpha observation. No AR was noted in white light. There were a few proms scattered about to the north and south, but the prominences on the western limb really stood out. At first glance it looked like two detached proms, but adjusting the outer etalon and increasing magnification, that section of limb came alive with prominence structure.

North is to the 4.5 o’clock position and west is the 2.5 o’clock position in my sketch.

Giving Gassendi the Digital Treatment

Lunar Crater Gassendi
Sketch and Details by Bognár Tamás

Gassendi

Telescope: 3″ F/11 Newton and 7,5 mm Super Plossl eyepiece

Date: 05.01.2009
UT: 18:14-19:14
Col.: 40.5°

This digital drawing preparated ArtRage 2.5 programs.
The program perfectly emulates the paper ones and the various
draughting instruments! Worthy to test!

Observing Location: Zakany – Hungary, 46° 15′ N 16° 57’E elev.: 129m

Bognár Tamás

Saturn’s Rings Nearly Edge On

Saturn and moons in mid February 2009
Sketch and Details by Frank McCabe

Saturn in mid-February 2009

While I was awaiting the waning gibbous moon to reach a higher position in my southern sky, I decided to try my hand at a Saturn sketch. With the rings nearly edge on I find that the ring system is much less intimidating to portray. To begin the sketch I used a Conte’ crayon and circular compass to draw a faint circle on black paper. I then grabbed an old mechanical drawing tool called a French curve to convert the circle into an ellipse after plotting a few points to create an equatorial bulge. When the shape looked alright for the bulging globe, I sketched the rings and then the globe while looking through a 6 mm eyepiece (magnification 241x). Saturn usually give me trouble while sketching, so after 15 minutes I found myself making too many errors so I erased the sketch and started over on the reverse side of the paper. The second attempt went better and after an hour I considered the planet sketch finished. I made a note of the positions of the moons I could see and added Tethys (10.3) to the west of the planet and Enceladus (11.9) viewed intermittently and Dione (10.5) to the east. Titan and Rhea were visible in the eyepiece at low power but beyond the margins of the sketch. The planets equatorial zone and the north and south temperate zones were bright and distinct. The darker regions over the remainder of the disk were less distinct through the polarizing filter I was using.

Sketching:

For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper, 7”x 9”, and a white Conte’pastel pencil and Conte’ crayons. The globe of Saturn is about 2.5” inches in diameter and was done using sharpened pieces of Conte’ crayon. Brightness was slightly decreased (-3) and contrast increased (+3) after scanning using Microsoft Office Picture Manager.

Telescope: 10 inch f/5.7 Dobsonian and 6mm eyepiece 241x, single polarizing filter
Date: 2-13-2009 5:25 – 6:45 UT
Temperature: -2°C (29°F)
clear, calm
Seeing: Pickering 6.0

Frank McCabe