A fine and Royal bird

Swan Nebula 

 The window of opportunity to explore the treasures of Sagittarius
is fairly brief from my 52 degree latitude observatory. This
coupled with the fact that my southern horizon  looks towards the
closest town 2 miles away with the sprawl of London starting just
25miles further on make for challenging observing especially of
diffuse objects.
  
  M17 the Swan or Check Mark nebula is one of the objects which I can get good views
of and one that visitors to my optics agree matches well with its name.

  Last week I caught up with this fine and Royal bird swimming on its stellar river.
The view prompted me to dig out this sketch from a couple of seasons back to share
with others.
  
  Scope used 14″ F5 Newtonian at 77x UHC Lumicon filter.HB pencil & blending stump
on white cartridge paper, scanned and saved as a negative with no enhancement.
From the Chippingdale Observatory, Hertfordshire, England.
  
  Clear Skies, Dale

Between the middle bay and a sea of vapors

Ukert 

Ukert is a relatively small crater that lies between Sinus Medii and Mare Vaporum. I
found it’s surrounding environment to be quite fascinating which is why I chose it
for the subject of this sketch. It was rendered on Strathmore Windpower sketch paper
with a 2HB mechanical pencil. Post processing was done with MGI Photosuite III.

Jason Aldridge
North Port, Florida

An Inventor and Lunar Sketcher of the mid-Nineteenth Century

 Copernicus Nasmyth

  The sketch of Copernicus crater shown above was made by James Nasmyth and is from
George F. Chambers’ book, A Handbook of Descriptive and Practical Astronomy,
1889-1890, Oxford, Clarendon, vol.1, figure 65 page 129.
  James Nasmyth will always be remembered for his ability to invent, design and
improve on power tools. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1808 to an artist father,
he left school at an early age to build machines, a passion that became his
vocation. His most famous invention was a forerunner to the pile driver known as
the steam hammer. With a life long interest in astronomy he spent the last 30 of
his 81 year lifespan directly involved in astronomy. During this time he built
telescopes and improved their mounts. In addition he charted and drew the moon and
sketched sunspots.
  This quote from the above work appears on page 128 and is associated with the
Copernicus crater drawing above. It is most revealing of 19th century thought
about lunar crater origin. “The Volcanic origin of the lunar craters cannot be
more plainly demonstrated than by comparing an engraving such as Fig.62, which
represents a known volcano – Tenerife- with any good engraving of a lunar crater,
e.g. Copernicus, Fig.65. The similarity is too striking to admit of there being
any doubts as to the identity of the physical causes which have originated each
surface.”
  
  Frank McCabe

The Mysterious Terrestrial Planet

Venus 2007

  In the 1950’s when I was a youngster, Venus was believed to be Earth-like not only
in size but in atmospheric conditions as well.  Today it is known that Venus has
the hottest surface temperature of all the planets (457°C on average) and a high
pressure atmosphere of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid. Venus is always shrouded
in clouds but its phase change and albedo features can be seen with a telescope.
The late spring and summer of 2007 have provided northern observers a great
opportunity to observe Venus in the west just after sunset. Within the week Venus
will reach inferior conjunction and begin to switch over to the morning sky as it
races past earth. Currently Venus is a thin crescent only 44 million km. from
earth and subtending an angular size of nearly 58 seconds of arc. Presently the
planet is too close in alignment with the sun for safe daytime observing but
beginning in September it will rise before the sun in the morning. The 4 drawings
above were made when  Venus was between 103 and 51 million km from the Earth.
The first drawing was made with an 18” Newtonian telescope at 381x and the other
three were made with a 10” Newtonian at magnifications between 161x and 241x.
Deep violet, red and polarizing filters were used to bring out the albedo cloud features.
 
  First drawing         7 pm local time June 11, 2007
  Second drawing     8 pm local time June 20, 2007
  Third drawing        5 pm local time July  1, 2007
  Fourth drawing     2 pm local time July 29, 2007
  
  Frank McCabe

Prom Dance

Prom Sequence 
Western prominence sequence and animation

I used the normal black Strathmore Artagain with a combination of Prang white
pencil, Conte’ white pencil and Conte’ crayon.

The Prang is waxy, more precise, and lighter markings. The Conte’ pencil is very
white heavy markings, but not as precise.

I’ve made a little animation to go with it.
http://www.sflorg.com/member_gallery/solar_images/20070804_animation

Erika Rix
Zanesville, Ohio USA

Busy as a Beehive

M44 

M 44, also called Praesepe or Beehive, is one of the greatest Open
Clusters of the night sky. Consisting of many bright stars, it is
already visible with the naked eye, the best view, however, is provided
by binoculars or a rich field telescope, which show M 44 in all her
magnificent beauty. The 1.5° FOV the Newtonian provided, when I sketched
this, was already way to small to show all the stars belonging to this
great cluster.

Date: December 24, 2006
Location: Steinwald, Bavaria, Germany
Instrument: Vixen Newtonian 4.5″ f/6 on Vixen GP
Constellation: Cancer
Seeing: Antoniadi II
NELM: 6m0
Bortle: 5
Magnification: 45x

Sebastian Lehner