Astronomy Sketch of the Day – Page 288 – Drawings and sketches of an astronomical nature

Subtle Southern Splendor

Located 2.2° north of 4th magnitude Phi (φ) Centauri, you’ll find what discoverer
John Herschel termed a “remarkable object”: a neat little double star shrouded in a
circular haze of nebulosity. Described as “bright” in several references I was
expecting something a little more conspicuous in the eyepiece than this object
proved to be.

My first view of this object occurred atop a wind-blasted bluff at Sunset Crater
National Monument in Arizona on May 12, 2007 (UT), and was hampered not only by the
howling winds but poor transparency near the horizon that only became truly apparent
a few hours later when the rising Milky Way failed to reveal itself in its usual
splendor as the Sagittarius through Cygnus region rose in the east. A second
observation took place two days later back home in California under somewhat
improved conditions (at least as far as horizon haze was concerned) and this sketch
was completed.

The initial appearance of NGC 5367 is that of a faint circular haze, about 3′ in
diameter surrounding a 10th magnitude star (which proves to be double at high
magnifications, and bears the designation h4636). Its appearance (particularly on
May 12) was very much like the halo produced by a slightly dewed up eyepiece. Two
field stars of similar magnitude did not exhibit this characteristic, however, thus
demonstrating that the haze surrounding the star was genuine nebulosity in the
depths of space and not condensation on my eyepiece.

With less certainty, averted vision sporadically hinted at more extensive structure
here, especially while slowly slewing the telescope back and forth in an east-west
motion. Faint strands of nebulosity curving northward from the circular haze
partially delineate a dark cometary globule (designated CG 12). This globule also
sends a dusky finger southward into the heart of the reflection nebula. Additional
nebulosity (designated GN 13.54.9) was suspected around a 12th magnitude star about
6′ to the south-southeast and possibly a tenuous bridge between the two patches.

Subject: NGC 5367
Object Type: Reflection Nebula
Constellation: Centaurus
Right Ascension (2000.0): 13h 57m 42.0s
Declination (2000.0): –39° 59′ 00″
Diameter(s): 2.5′ x 2.5′

Subject: J. Herschel 4636
Object Type: Double Star
Constellation: Centaurus
Right Ascension (2000.0): 13h 57m 43.1s
Declination (2000.0): –39° 58′ 45″
Magnitudes: 9.9, 10.5
Separation: 3.6″
Position Angle: 33°

Observer: Eric Graff
Location: Cuyamaca Mts., San Diego Co., California (4000 ft. elevation)
Date & Time: 14 May 2007 at 05:15 UT
Transparency: NELM ~6.2
Seeing: Pickering 6/10
Telescope: Parks Astrolight EQ6 (6″ f/6 Newtonian Reflector)
Eyepiece: 7.5mm Parks Gold Series-5 Plössl (120x, 26′ TFoV)
Filter: None
Sketching Materials: #2 pencil, black ink, blending stump, 24# copy paper

References:
NGC/IC Project: http://www.ngcic.org/
SIMBAD: http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/
WDS: http://ad.usno.navy.mil/wds/
Cragin, Murray and Emil Bonamno. 2001. Uranometria 2000.0, Volume 3: The Deep Sky
Field Guide. Willmann-Bell, Inc. Richmond Virginia U.S.A.
Jones, Kenneth Glyn, Ed. 1987. Webb Society Deep-Sky Observers Handbook, Volume 7:
The Southern Sky. Enslow Publishers, Inc. Hillside, New Jersey U.S.A.
Strong, Robert A., and Roger W. Sinnott. 2000. Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion, 2nd
Edition. Sky Publishing Corporation. Cambridge, Massachusetts U.S.A.

Three craters from the top of Alto Rey

Hi Friends,

I would like to share my sketches with all of you, I have lots of them in
my notebook and when I discovered the ASOD site recently I was surprised and happy
to find it. Its wonderful, a really good idea.

I made this sketch of three moon craters of the southern region with graphite
pencil on white paper, three craters are hand made without processing after,
just painted looking directly through the ocular and with red light. They
took me almost an hour aproximately.

The equipment used: Meade 8″ SC. Date:
3 Jun 2006; Moon age: 8 days.

The night were very good conditions, I was on top of a mountain called Alto
Rey in Guadalajara, Spain.

All my drawings are almost first drafts in the place of observation, the
best I try to do them again and then more good and after change to negative
to get them more real. I havent still practice with photoshop, but I will
try it.

All my drafts are kept tenderly because they are the result of the night,
all filled with annotations and details by hand,

I hope you enjoy!
Thanks a lot.

Leonor Ana

Sword of the hunter

One of the most majestic places to visit with a small scope or binocular might be
the sword of Orion. With every new magnification this fascinating complex of
clusters and nebulae shows more hidden treasures. So here is a 4° Fov impression of Orions Sword.

Place : Bekkevoort,
Date : Feb 21, 2007
Time : 21.00UT
Seeing : 3 (of 5)
Transp. : 2 (of 5)

Scope : ETX 70 with 26mm SP, no filter.
Power : 14x
Fov : 3,9°

North is up (bino orientation)

The sketch is digitally ‘drawn’ with Photopaint, based on a raw EP-sketch. I hope
you like it.
Rony De Laet

http://www.geocities.com/rodelaet, my personal website.

Glowing triangle

Observing M 103 requires a good deal of magnification, in binoculars or
at low powers, the cluster is only visible as a more or less bright
nebula or a small and distant group of stars. At higher powers, its
specific triangular shape becomes visible, three stars forming its
corners with two brighter stars in its center, one of them with a
striking reddish tone. Its catalog number is BD+59 274, a class M1Iab
star, a Red Supergiant. The double star at the cluster’s Northern-most
point is Struve 131.

Date: November 16, 2006
Location: Erbendorf, Bavaria, Germany
Instrument: Dobsonian 8″ f/6
Constellation: Cassiopeia
Seeing: II of VI
Transparency: II of VI
NELM: 5m0
Magnification: 200x

Sebastian Lehner

Cup of nectar

Crater Bohnenberger in Eastern Mare Nectaris

From my location, this evening presented the best observing conditions since June
of last year. As the sun set in the west-northwest the crescent moon was riding
about 55° above the horizon, so I spent about hour looking for potential targets
to sketch. Crater Taruntius presented an interesting sketching target with its
central peak and unusual wall but I wanted to sketch closer to the terminator. I
finally settled on crater Bohnenberger just west of the Lunar Pyrenees Mountains
that define the eastern edge of the Sea of Nectar.

Bohnenberger is an old Pre-Imbrium crater 33 km diameter. Bohnenberger has a pair
of broad central peaks, a break in its northern wall and a crater on its western
floor. Crater Bohnenberger A about the same size (30 km) with a bright, shallow,
flat floor can be seen to the south with 12 km crater G between them. Some 100 km
to the west of Bohnenberger A, crater Rosse could be seen among the lunar ridges
in the Sea of Nectar. The high walls of Rosse were brightly lit against the dark
frozen lava of the mare. The dark shallow crater about the same size as Rosse at
the bottom of the sketch is crater Gaudibert H. Within the region of the sketch a
great deal more could be seen but was beyond my ability to record in a reasonable
time as the shadows and light continued to change.

Sketching:
For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper 9”x12”, white and
black Conte’ pastel pencils and a blending stump.
Before submitting I changed slightly the contrast using Imageenhance software
Telesccope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian and 6 mm eyepiece 241X
Date: 4-22-2007 1:35-2:40 UT
Temperature: 20° C (69° F)
Clear, calm
Seeing: Antoniadi I-II
Colongitude 325.7 °
Lunation 4.5 days
Illumination 27.5 %

Frank McCabe

Sphere of influence

7th May 2007. around 21:30UT
Novo Cice, Croatia

This sketch was created on plain A4 paper using graphite pencils and
fingers (for blurring). Later it was scanned and inverted in Photoshop
after some minor contrast and brightness adjustments.
I used 8″ F6 Dobson and 6mm Super Plossl Eyepiece. Magnification was
200x and field of view was 0.25°. Limiting magnitude was 5.50 and
transparency was very good.

M5 is beautiful globular cluster in Serpens. M5 was discovered by the
German astronomer Gottfried Kirch in 1702 when he was observing a comet.
Charles Messier found it in 1764 and thought it a nebula without any
stars associated with it. William Herschel resolved individual stars in
the cluster in 1791, counting roughly 200 of them.Spanning 165
light-years across, M5 is one of the larger globular clusters known. The
gravitational sphere of influence of M5, (ie. the volume of space where
stars would be gravitationally bound to the cluster and not ripped away
from it by the Milky Way’s gravitational pull), has a radius of some 200
light-years.

At 13 billion years old it is also one of the older globulars associated
with the Milky Way Galaxy. The distance of M5 is about 24,500
light-years away from Earth and the cluster contains more than 100,000
stars up to perhaps 500,000 according to some estimates.

Vedran Vrhovac
www.inet.hr/~vevrhova/english/index.htm

Heavy light

Cardanus, Krafft, Eddington,Seleucus,Briggs, Briggs B, W Oceanus Procellarum
South Telescope build by Grubb Dublin 1868

Fl ? 18Ft 10.7inches/Objective 11.75 inches

Eyepiece? Objective by Cauchoix 1829
Dunsink Observatory Dublin
53° 22′ 60N 6° 19′ 60W
April 30th 2007
20:50UT – 21:57UT
Lunation 13.43 days
Illumination 98%
Seeing 1-2
T poor/hazy
300gm Daler Paper/Daler Soft Pastels/Conte Crayons/ Quilling
needle/Blending stick

I was fourteen years when old I first looked through the South Telescope in Dunsink Observatory. I had pestered my dad to bring me out there, a bit of a long drive in those days, before motorways.

Jupiter was on view that evening, it was crystal clear. The planet must have been quite high as I could look through the Grubb standing up.

I had my own little Tasco scope on a plastic tripod at the time not much to see in it, but the moon always got a look. Ever since I wanted to revisit that moment and look once again through the eyepiece of this well constructed classic telescope. Over the years I paid several visits to the observatory public nights, but always cloud or rain or both.

I got an idea in my head a few months ago, I asked for time to sketch something through the eyepiece this request yielded a positive answer, but it took time to set up.

April 30th 2007 I got a phone call from, let’s say my host in Dunsink “would you like to try tonight”? I was out the door and on the M50 with my gear in less then 10 minutes, an hour’s drive to the Observatory.

I was greeted warmly and the dome was opened, the scope set up, the steps in place.

My position for the next hour and ten minutes was probably the most uncomfortable sketching position in which I had ever worked. I was neither seated or standing, no tracking, and a big telescope to move.

The Grubb was so well balanced, easy to use, a joy to hold, and a privilege to use.

Left alone for the most part I quickly got into my zoned in or zoned out

(depends on your point view) sketching mode.

The eyepiece was low powered generating most likely 125X, used for public viewing, other eyepieces maybe available if I get to repeat this astronomical adventure.

Apart from the difficult sketching position, I felt so at home in Dunsink Observatory, it felt so moreish. Up and down moving the steps, to follow the Moon as she charged along heading for her bed. My concentration waned after an hour, more work to do than in my garden. I was stiff the next morning but I was high as a kite, I got to do something with this instrument made so carefully many years ago in Dublin. A full circle moment in my life, moments that seem to happen with more frequency these days.

In brief periods, when the image was still I could see much more detail and fine tones of grey than in my Dob. Eddington gave me great shapes and that ridge was so so slender, only 2% of the Moon was in darkness and even a little of that was seeping through the blackness into the day.

I admire Arthur Stanley Eddington for his communication prowess during his life.

A poem he wrote came to mind on the way home,

“Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate
One thing at least is certain, light has weight
One thing is certain and the rest debate
Light rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight. “ A.S.Eddington

Apart from this poem being about gravitational lensing, the phrase “light has weight” sticks out to me as an artist. Drawing in the sunlit wall on the western side of Eddington, 138km or so of sunlit weight, which was up till that lunation invisible, non existing until our sun made it so.

Dynamic Duo

M81 and M82

Here is another digital sketch. It’s the first one made with a digital tablet and a
pressure sensitive pen. It feels more natural than using a mouse to draw nebulosity
or to smudge out an area. The application (Photo-Paint) controls the relationship
between the pressure you apply with the pen to the tablet, and the effect produced
by brush tools in Corel PHOTO-PAINT. As you press down on a drawing tablet with the
pen, the effect produced by such tools changes. Several attributes can be changed at
the same time by pressure, like size, brightness, opacity etc. Like a common pencil,
a line can be drawn thicker by applying more pressure with the pen. I’m still in an
experimental phase with the settings. I hope you like the sketch.

Date : March 12, 2007
Time : 21.14UT
Scope : Skywatcher 102/500
EP : Vixen LV Zoom at 8mm
Power : 63x
FOV: 50′
Filter : none
Seeing : 3/5
Transp. : 2.5/5
Sketch Orientation : N up, W right.
Digital sketch made with a wireless digital tablet and a pressure sensitive pen in
PhotoPaint, based on a raw pencil sketch.
Rony De Laet

http://www.geocities.com/rodelaet, my personal website.

Jovial Giant

These are sketches created by hand and processed with Photoshop CS after being
scanned. I use graphite pencil and colored pencils on white paper.

Naturally some of these are based to looking at astrophotography, for more details.
Here are two sketches. The one is by hand and the other after being scanned and
processed with Photoshop.

With this method, I’ve created sketches of the Sun Prominences, and other objects of
the Deep Sky…

Basic equipment used: My Telescopes, ETX-125 5″/ LX 200R 8″/ and my
PST/Coronado/SolarMax 40/TMax Filter- Double Stacked.(For the Sun Sketches)

Scanner, EPSON PERFECTION 3490 PHOTO. ToUcam PRO
II-DSI-c..and my SBIG (recently) ST-2000XM.!!

Peter Desypris
Athens-Greece

Saturn in the Late 19th Century

These two sketches of Saturn appear in David P. Todd’s, A New Astronomy © 1897,
American Book Company. The first is drawn by British astronomer Henry Pratt made
on the evening of February 11, 1884 using an 8.15 inch clock driven Newtonian
telescope working at 450 power. It shows the rings of Saturn tilted most favorably
toward the earth. It appears on page 366 of Todd’s book. A brief article written
by Henry Pratt can be found in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical
Society, Volume 44, June 1884, p. 407 the article is titled: The Physical Features
of Saturn, 1884.

The second Saturn sketch in David P. Todd’s, A New Astronomy © 1897,
American Book Company which appears on page 18 was made by the well
known American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard at Lick Observatory
in 1894 (10 years after Pratt’s sketch). E.E. Barnard just 3 years before
rendering this sketch, had discovered Jupiter’s 5th moon Amalthea only
11 days after he was given permission to use the Alvan Clark 36 inch
Refractor telescope on Mount Hamilton. Note the change in appearance
of Saturn’s rings in the 10 years between sketches.

The full-length biography E. E. Barnard by William Sheehan, published in 1995, is
a truly remarkable story of triumph in the face adversity. The book is titled: The
Immortal Fire Within – The Life and Work of Edward Emerson Barnard.

Submitted by
Frank McCabe