Object Name: Comet Garradd and M92
Object Type: comet, globular gluster
Location: Cherry Springs Dark Sky Park, Pennsylvania
Date: February 3, 2012
Media: Digitally simulated chalk and white pencil on black paper.
I literally had seconds to glimpse it this morning, so my sketch cannot be accurate (9:30 UT). We were completely socked in. I waited 45 minutes for a tiny tear in the cloud cover to sweep rapidly across
Hercules. Then for another 30 minutes there was no other opportunity and I went back to bed. Now, a long wait under almost complete cloud cover makes you exceptionally well dark adapted… so I really believe it was the comet that I saw with the naked eye for a few moments as I was raising my binoculars with
shaking hands. Blue, near grey zone, altitude 2400 ft/700 m.
Object Name: Sunspot AR1429.
Object Type: Sunspot Cluster
Location: Bristol
Date 10th March 2012
Media: Drawn at scope with graphite pencil on white paper then scanned and processed using Sketchpad Pro on ipad.
I used an 8″ SCT with a mix of 20mm bino viewer plus 10mm lens.
Weather was good.
AR 1429 caused quite a stir in UK as it unleashed a series of CME’s that raised hopes of a widely seen Aurora. Sadly UK weather was not kind for this event (no surprise there!). The cluster runs largely south at bottom.
I have blurred the result to more closely approximate the actual viewing experience.
It is morning across the 165 km wide irregular floor of this walled plain
crater. J Herschel is a pre-Nectarian crater and in the observing light is well lit across its rubbly, slightly convex floor. This crater is a survivor of the Imbrium basin formation. The southern well defined outer rim to the south (to the left in the sketch) has its rampart buried under the lavas of Mare Frigoris. Along the south wall at the west end is crater Horrebow (26 km) which can be seen superimposed upon Horrebow A (25 km.). To the right and closer to the terminator and limb are craters Anaximander (70 km.) and Carpenter (61 km.) both of their rims are illuminated and only part of the floor of the former can be seen.
Sketching:
For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper, white and black Conte’ pastel pencils and a blending stump.
Telescope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian and 9 mm eyepiece 161X
Date: 05-3-2012 02:10 – 03:30 UT
Temperature: 21° C (70° F)
Partly cloudy, calm
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Colongitude: 53 °
Lunation: 11.8 days
Illumination: 86.6 %
Altitude of Moon about 41°
St Cronans Stargazers St Cronans National School
Bray Co Wicklow
Ireland
13:00 – 14:03 UT
May 4th 2012
May 4th 2012 14:03 UT Crepe Paper, Acrylic Paint, Washable Glue, Structure Gel and energy. Today in Bray Co Wicklow Ireland 16 boys from St Cronans National School brought the sun to Earth. Deirdre did some observations early in the day, but then because of cloud we took the rest of the information from ‘ the sun now’ on SDO. We added in Active Region 1471,with the large sunspot , some small filaments and some prominences. ( a bit of artistic licence there) We looked at the Earth to scale, we learnt about the Photosphere and the Chromosphere . We learnt about the Venus Transit. The event was part of Dublin City of Science 2012. The children did a great job and were very proud of their work. We carried our sun into the school singing ‘here comes the sun’ The Sun will be on exhibit for all the pupils to see and learn. The boys were members of St Cronans Stargazers the kids astronomy group based at the school. Action Sun – Lets bring the Sun to Earth by Deirdre Kelleghan Action Sun – is an indoor or outdoor activity which allows groups of children to participate in building a large solar disc or several solar discs. This Earth built sun mimics the Photosphere and Chromosphere of the sun, includes sunspots, filaments, and prominences present on the sun in real time. The materials are simple, paper, glue and paint. It is kinaesthetic participatory learning for young children. The activity educates and supports science through art and the creative process. We made the Sun on Earth and also learnt about the Venus Transit
Action Sun participantes were St Cronans Stargazers:
Daniel
Sean S
Ruan
Sean K
Ben
Max
Tony
Eoghan
Connor
Gerard
Ruairi
Adam
Sam
Evan
Diamuid
—
Deirdre Kelleghan
Discover Science and Engineering Science Ambassador 2012
Vice Chair IFAS
National Coordinator for Astronomers Without Borders
UNAWE rep Ireland
2012 05 03, 1845 UT – 2130 UT.
Solar h-alpha, Prominences and NOAAs 1469, 1471, 1472, 1473, 1474.
PCW Memorial Observatory, Texas – Erika Rix,
Temp: 33°C, winds SE 7 mph, occasional light cirrus,
Seeing: Wilson 2-3, Transparency: 4/6, 50x,
DS 60mm Maxscope, LXD75, Baader Planetarium Hyperion 8-24mm Mark III .
Sketch created scope-side with black Strathmore Artagain paper, white Conte’ crayon and pencil, Derwent charcoal pencil, black oil pencil.
With five active regions, the Sun made quite an appearance today in spite of the limb. There were a few decent prominences, especially to the eastern hemisphere. My favorite view, though, were magnetic fields surrounding 1471 made apparent by the very thin active region filaments (ARFs). They reached down like fingers from the sunspots in that region. Plage was very intricate and meshed into what I believe was AR 1472.
The quiet region filaments (QRFs) were in abundance in the southern northern hemisphere with a few speckled to the south. AR 1474 seemed a bit washed out with plage and faint darkened areas. There was only slight plage definition and no sunspots observed in h-alpha. I didn’t set up a white light filter today for comparison.
1473 and 1469 were blended together by the plage and many lines of ARFs, including filaments reaching out over the edge for short, bright prominences. Plage was very bright, forming the shape of a tuning fork in 1469. These were impressive sets of active regions when paired up.
This was my first solar observing session since moving to Texas about two and a half weeks ago. With all that took place in preparing the old house for sale and the move to Texas, I’ve been deprived of any observing other than naked eye. It was a relief to be behind an eyepiece once again.
Clavius is a very nice crater on the moon surface. The smaller impacts on the crater bottom looks like the wave-circles from a stone, if you throw it flat over a lake:
Object Name: Clavius Crater
Object Type: Lunar Crater
Location: near Tauberbischofsheim Germany
Date: 05.Nov.2011
Media graphite: pencil and white Paper
The telescope was a 115/805 TMB Apo refractor on Vixen SXD by 200x.
