Messier 11 (NGC 6705)

Messier 11
Messier 11

Although my backyard observing spot shows no hint of the Milky Way on the best nights, if the skies are transparent and steady I have respectable views of many deep sky targets.

On this night I decided to sketch one of them high in the southern sky.

M 11 is a rich open or galactic cluster in the northern sky on a good summer night. Some 500 stars of this cluster’s 2900 are brighter than 14th magnitude and it glows at magnitude is 6.3. Many suns here are very hot B class and densely packed from our perspective. Faint members scintillate in the ocular as your eye adjusts to them. This open cluster was discovered by Gottfried Kirch in 1681 and resolved into individual stars in 1733 by William Derham. At 6000 light years it is about half the distance of the nearest globular clusters and just as splendid.

Sketching:

9″x11″ white sketching paper; 6B, 4B, HB graphite pencils and a blending stump;

Scanned and inverted

Scope: 10″ f/5.7 Dobsonian: 13 mm widefield eyepiece 111x

Date and Time: 6-18-2012, 06:00-06:50 UT

Seeing: Pickering 8/10

Transparency: above average 3.5/5

Location: Constellation: Scutum

R.A. 18h 51.1m

Dec. -06° 16′

Frank McCabe

NGC 6520 and Barnard 86

NGC 6520 and Barnard 86
NGC 6520 and Barnard 86 (B86)

Location: Nagyvarsány/Hungary
Observer: Viktor Cseh
Date: 2012-06-17
Telescope: 140/880 Newtonian reflector + 10mm ocular

Coordinates of the NGC6520: 18h03m -27°51′

This is my favourite open cluster! Small but bright, and very unique. The dark nebula can be seen very definitely, triangular, and there is a small tongue. The lights of Milky Way in the background.

Clear skies!

Viktor

Mare Imbrium

Mare Imbrium
Mare Imbrium

I ‘m relatively new to astro sketching, actually this is my second serious attempt.
Pictured is Mare Imbrium in the middle, with large craters from north to south: Plato, Archimedes and Eratosthenes. I ‘m really starting to love this area.

The drawing was made with pastel crayons on white paper, directly behind a WO Megrez 80 II FD, 123x magnification. Hope you like it!

Erik van Woerkens, from Belgium.

Crater Clavius

Crater Clavius
Crater Clavius

This sketch is of the 220km diameter crater Clavius, which is near the lunar South Pole. The orientation of this sketch is is with North to the bottom, so the crater Rutherford is at the top left, and Porter is at the bottom left.

The sketch was done from a photo taken in Adelaide, South Australia, on 2012-05-30, when the moon was 67% illuminated. The telescope was a 150mm SCT.

Medium is charcoal on white paper.

-Ivan

Dual Mount Venus Transit

H-Alpha Venus Transit
H-Alpha Venus Transit

Animation from eyepiece sketch while plotting the transit: http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa201/ErikaGRix/2012-venus-transit.gif

Link to report and photos: http://pcwobservatory.com/2012/06/07/2012-june-056-venus-transit/

I set up my dual mounting rig for both white light and h-alpha and my husband set up his LX200 with a white light filter as well. We picked a spot in the front field to optimize the horizon for sunset. I had already utilized my sky planning tools so that I knew when and where first contact would be for my scopes and had templates on two different clipboards to record my observations, one for white light and one for h-alpha. Paul had my Canon EOS DSLR Rebel hooked up to the LX200 for his imaging session. In the mean time, temperatures had gone up to 101.3 F.

The countdown began and at 2205 UT (1705 CDT) first contact was made on the NE solar limb. Just as it bit a little more into the disk, the first cloud rolled across my view preventing me from witnessing the progression into (and including) second contact. It was disappointing as I wanted to recreate Capt. Cook’s and Charles Green’s observation/sketches from 1769. My first instinct was to view first contact through h-alpha in an attempt to view more of Venus’ disk prior to transiting in front of the limb, but the transparency was bad and seeing was moderate so thought I would stick with white light for a crisp “entry”. Due to the dual mounting system, I could easily switch between the two filter systems in the first few minutes of contact.

White Light Venus Transit
White Light Venus Transit

The observation session ended at 0030 UT on June 6th, 2012 when a large cloud obscured our view and would be there well after Sunset. I was very grateful for the opportunity to witness this transit and the memories of it will last a lifetime.

Erika Rix – Texas, USA
www.pcwobservatory.com
In association with www.solarastronomy.org

ASOD Server Update

Hi everyone,

You may have noticed that the site was down for about a day and a half this week. It appears that some hacked code had been added to generate spam on some of the pages. The web hosting provider noticed it and shut the site down until we cleared things out. Communicating with tech support to understand the problem was a bit on the slow side, but now that this is fixed, we’re back up and running.

However, this brings up another topic, and I am interested in your feedback. In order to save on web hosting costs, I am considering moving ASOD to the hosting provider I currently use for The Belt of Venus. This would save about $100/year and would put ASOD on a server with excellent service and very fast technical support. You would still direct your browser to ‘www.asod.info’, however, once the site loads, your browser’s address bar would re-load to say either ‘asod.perezmedia.net’ or ‘perezmedia.net/asod’. I’m interested in your feedback, and if anyone has any concerns with this approach. I’m glad to answer any questions I can and look forward to your thoughts.

Thanks for the ongoing support with sketch submissions, comments, and visits!

Jeremy Perez
for ASOD

Three Beautiful Craters

Theophilus, Cyrillus, Catharina
Theophilus, Cyrillus, Catharina

Object Name: Theophilus, Cyrillus, Catharina
Object Type: Craters
Location: Płaza, Poland
Media: black paper, pastels
Telescope: Synta 8 (200/1200)
Magnification: 240x
Seeing: 4/5

This is my new sketch of one of the hardest things to sketch. I mean the Moon or craters that you can find on the lunar surface. There are dozens of small holes and surface irregularities that we should put on our sketch. Nevertheless I tried to present three craters which are lying close to each other on a piece of paper. My target were Theophilus, Cyrillus and Catharina. And here is my sketch.

M13

Messier 13
Messier 13

Object name: M13
Type of object: Globular Star Cluster
Date: 08 June 2012
seeing 6/10
Type of telescope: Refractor 102/500mm
Eyepiece: Ultra Wide 6mm 66º (83X)
Location: Arouca, in Portugal
White paper and pencil

Hello,

I made this sketch near the center of a city, where the light pollution is medium. The sky had a little high fog, but I can see the stars very well. But my principal enemy was the small aperture of my refractor . I don’t use any light pollution filter.

My sketch was done with a pencil, on white paper and then reversed the color in GIMP software.

Hope you enjoy!

Best regards

Waldju