NGC 4631, also known as The Whale Galaxy, is located in Canes Venatici. It is a 9.5 magnitude edge on spiral galaxy whose low surface brightness makes it very difficult to see from my urban Ottawa backyard. Under the darker skies out of town The Whale is very bright and very large. The mottled nature of the galaxy is very apparent. The Pup, NGC 4627, is the smaller galaxy, at magnitude 13. I made this graphite sketch using my 12″ Dob at 88x at a site near Almonte, Ontario, Canada on May 20, at 0040EDT.
today, when I started my observing-session, I found a very nice area with a longer Rima in south of Lacus Somniorum. It was the landscape near Crater Hall and G. Bond.
I´ ve never observed this region before and I was very surprised about the dark thin cleft, wich follows a course roughly along a north-south orientation, and continues for a length of about 150 kilometers.
Object Name Rima G. Bond / Crater Hall Object Type Lunar Crater Location near Tauberbischofsheim Germany Date 27.03.2012 20.30 – 21.00 p. m. Media graphite pencil and white Paper
The telescope was a Meade ACF 10″ on Vixen SXD by 300x
I observed many galaxies in the spring sky these days, and I made a small compilation of the most beautiful objects. I hope you’ll like it 🙂
Galaxies: M51 in Canes Venatici, M83 in Hydra, NGC4565 in Coma Berenices and NGC5018 in Virgo.
I would like to send you a restaurated sketch of comet West, one of the brightest comets
in the last 40 years. This is a naked-eye-sketch from my observation 8. Mar.- 76.
The nucleus of this comet broke apart in four, and at the end of this month I could
observe three components on line in the coma with my telescope!
The tail of comet West was also beautiful and bright with synchronic dusttail in
the beginning of this month. A very interesting object to observe in scope and 10 x 50 binos.
I used pen and pencil on white paper and inverted.
Location: Trondheim, Norway.
H-Alpha Sun - May 20, 2012H-Alpha Eclipse Diagram - May 20, 2012
Knowing that we fell within a good band to view a partial portion of the annular eclipse, Paul and I scoped out the local county roads earlier in the day for optimal horizons. The partial eclipse for our location was due to start at 1932 ST (0032 UT) which would only give about 50 minutes of eclipse viewing before sunset. The skies cleared up and we were fortunate to have perfect viewing conditions that evening.
I started off drawing the full solar disk in h-alpha. Four active regions lined up east to west with two more to the south (depicted to the top of the first sketch in the animation). I then made a quick second sketch to use for recording the times and placements of the Moon as it passed between Earth and the Sun.
First contact was at 0032 UT. The first marking was at 0035 UT. I set my iPhone’s timer to go off every five minutes until sunset, marking the Moon’s progress each increment with my oil pencil along with the times. In between, Paul and I would alternate using a pair of solar glasses from solarastronomy.org and the views from my double-stacked Coronado Maxscope 60mm h-alpha telescope.
The first image of the animation shows the original sketch in its entirety. Later, I used the second solar disk sketch as a reference to recreate the eclipse on the original sketch with a cut out circular piece of black Strathmore paper. This animation is the result. http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa201/ErikaGRix/20120520-animation.gif
As the solar disk became too dim to view (represented in the last couple frames of the animation), I was forced to leave the eyepiece and enjoy the last several minutes with the solar glasses and my camera.
Two original sketches created at the eyepiece with black Strathmore Artagain paper, white Conte’ crayon and pencil, white Prang color pencil, Derwent charcoal pencil, black oil pencil.
The conjunction between Venus and Jupiter was one of the astronomical highlights of March.
At March 24, another competitor came on the horizon besides these two celestial objects: the Moon.
In the next couple of days, the Moon would climb towards Jupiter and Venus in a spectacular conjunction.
This Photoshop made sketch shows the early stage of the conjunction. At around 7:30 P.M., the Moon was in sight above the horizon. Bright planet Jupiter stood higher at the sky, and the even brighter planet Venus stood slightly above Jupiter.
The Pleiades (M45) were visible above Venus, but with some difficulty.
The galaxy is a barred spiral Ngc253 found in the constellation Sculptor at 12.9 billion light years. It has a magnitude +7.1 making it easy to observe. It belongs to the Local Group and is also known as the Silver Coin Galaxy in form and color when you disclose your photography. The drawing of the galaxy is made easier when there is a O-III filter.
a greeting
Victoriano Canales (Elche (Alicante (Spain)))
Object Name The Siamese Twins; NGC 4567 & NGC 4568 with NGC 4564
Object Type: Spiral Galaxies in Virgo (Colliding)
Location: West Desert, Utah
Date: May 12th, 2012
Media: Gray and White Pastels on Black Paper with brush
Equipment: 14 inch Dob, 27mm Panoptic, 14mm Pentax, 10mm Pentax (all with Type I Paracorr).
Sky Conditions: Clear, cold, Antoniadi I
Time: 01:20am MDT or 0720 UT
NGC 4567 is mag. 11.3 with a size of 3.0’x2.0′. NGC 4568 has a mag. of 10.8 and is 4.6’x2.0′ in size; NGC 4564 is mag. 11.1 with a size of 3.5’x1.5.
Notes: This was my last sketch of the night as we felt the moon was going to rise about 1:40 a.m. or so but in reality, it did not come up until after 2:10a.m. NGC 4567 is the northern most galaxy of the two that are colliding. It is rather bright, and fairly small in size. It is more roundish in nature than its colliding companion. NGC 4567 has a higher surface brightness than NGC 4568.
NGC 4568 is the southern member of the colliding galaxies here. It is pretty bright and rather large and is elongated SSW to NNE. The core is very bright.
NGC 4564 actually should be just a little more off, but I ran out of paper and wanted it included in the sketch. It is smaller in size than the other two, and is bright. Like NGC 4568 it is elongated but SW to NE. There is outer diffusion and then a brighter core region with a stellar nucleus.
