Object Name: The Western Veil – NGC6960 & 52 Cygni
Object Type: Emission Nebula and foreground star
Location: Kenton, OK (Okie-Tex Star Party 2011)
Date: September 28, 2011
Time: 0200 CDT
Media: Conte crayon and white pencil on black paper.
Object: The Pleiades (M45) and the moon
Object type: Open cluster/moon
Location: Montreal, Canada
Date: December 8th, 2011
Media: White pastel on black paper, digital retouch
I marked the date in my agenda: The beautiful Pleiades and an almost full moon side by side. Something not to be missed. And the conditions were good: no clouds and a comfortable 3°C.
My 15 X 70 binoculars were the perfect instrument for this observation as the two objects could fit within two field of view. A sketch had to be done…
Jean Barbeau
Aloha,
I got up at 3:50 am this morning – crystal clear skies & not too cold, maybe 50 degrees, out on my deck with my 7×50 binocular. At that time the moon looked like a 25% crescent with the remaining body visible. At 4:10 it was so lovely, just a faint SW arc of light still on the moon & the shadow a dark dusty orange. The sky became dark enough to see stars around the moon – an eerie sight. At ~4:45 the eclipse appeared complete but clouds were coming in & it was even difficult to see the outline but I could still make out nearby stars. The moon just disappeared in totality and was difficult to locate without binocular aid.
Object: Lunar Eclipse
Equipment: 7X50 Nikon Action Extreme Binocular
Date: 12/10/11 @ 4:10 am
Location: Maui, Hawaii
Media: Black art paper, pastels & colored pencils
Hi!
This is my sketch of the Lunar Eclipse. In Poland the initial phase and the main phase of the eclipse was impossible to observe. But we could watch the final phase of the eclipse.
This sketch shows the Moon coming out from the shadow of the Earth.
Objects: Moon – Lunar Eclipse
Date: December 10, 2011
Time: About 16:25 – 16:35 (4:25 – 4:35 PM)
Place: Nowy Sącz, Poland
Equipment: Binoculars Bresser 10×50
Conditions: faint fog, light pollution.
Technique: Pastels on navy blue art paper. Correction and tooling with GIMP2
Author: Aleksander Cieśla (Wimmer)
Hi.
Yesterday (October 31st) I went to see interesting occultation. The star Xi Sagittarii was to be obscured by the Moon. Unfortunately, five minutes before the occultation the clouds came. What a bad luck.
So I have only a sketch of the Moon and Xi Sgr in short distance from each other 🙁
Object: Moon & Xi Sagittarii
Date: October 31st, 2011
Time: About 18:25 (6:25 PM)
Place: Nowy Sącz, Poland
Equipment: Binoculars Bresser 10×50
Technique: White pastels on black art paper. Tooling, levels, color, light in GIMP2
Author: Aleksander Cieśla (Wimmer)
One could sketch the plethora of craters in the southern highlands and not finish them for many years. The craters for sketching chosen here are ones I have not sketched before but were standouts on this evening. The finest sketch I have ever seen of this region was made back in January of 2007 by Sally Russell and can be seen at Astronomy Sketch of the Day for March 27, 2007.
The central large crater that anchors this sketch is Pre-Nectarian period Stöfler a 129 kilometer walled plain with a buried central peak. Piled on top of it to the southeast are a sequence of craters decreasing in size and including one without a name, then Faraday ( 71 km.), Stöfler P ( 34 km.) and Faraday C ( 30 km.). North of Stöfler most of the rim of crater Fernelius (66 km.) was visible but all of the floor was in darkness.
I was forced to work quickly as clouds were rolling in at about the time I was just beyond mid-sketch.
Equipment and Sketching:
Telescope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian on a drive platform 4mm ortho eyepiece 361x
For this sketch I used: black Strathmore 400 Artagain paper 9″x 12″, white and black Conte’ pastel pencils and blending stumps, white Pearl eraser.
Date: 11-2 to 11-3-2011 23:30-00:40 UT
Temperature: 17° C (63° F)
Partly cloudy soon becoming mostly cloudy, high humidity 70%
Waxing gibbous phase
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Transparency: 6/10
Colongitude: 356.6 °
Lunation: 7.2 days
Illumination: 53.2 %
Frank McCabe
Object type – Huge filament and prominence
Location – Wilp, The Netherlands
Date – November 12 and November 14, 2011
Media – Pastel pencil on black paper, color with Photoshop
The largest prominence and the largest filament I have ever seen, both visible at the same time! It was a fantastic view and I made two sketches of them, two days apart. On November 14, the huge filament blew a large part of itself away from the Sun at the exact moment I was observing, creating a thin candle-like flame above the surface. A remarkable sight. Clearly the Sun is getting more active every month. What it’s got left in its suprise box while creeping towards solar maximum? Can’t wait to find out!
Kind Regards,
Roel Weijenberg
www.roelblog.nl
Our star continues to provide stunning sights as we approach solar maximum. This huge prominence, among the biggest I’ve ever seen, is visible in the hydrogen alpha wavelength, but it takes a specially designed scope or filter to see it. My 40mm Personal Solar Telescope (PST) is one such scope.
The prominence consists of superheated solar plasma suspended along magnetic field lines. It is not static, but changes constantly–sometimes the changes happen quickly and sometimes slowly. The appearance of this prominence had changed subtly by the end time of the sketch, so if you want to draw one of these monsters, be prepared to work fast!
The Sun in H alpha
Solar Prominence
Friars Hill, WV USA
12 November 2011 1850-1910 UT
Conte’ crayon, Conte’ pencil, and Derwent Graphtint color pencil on black paper.
Thanks,
Michael Rosolina
While reviewing my log book I came across this sketch of the conjunction of the Moon and M44, May 10, 2008 as seen from my backyard in Orleans, Ontario, Canada at about 10:10 local time. The sketch was made with white pastel on black paper and scanned into the computer, No processing was done. The seeing was very good that evening. My log comments that at 200x in my 8″ Dob everything was very steady. I was struck by the beauty of this conjunction especially with the earthshine on the moon.
Clear skies,
Gordon
I made the sketch at the Okanagan Observatory on July 9 2011.
I used pastels on black paper along with a brush and smudging stump. The stars are a mixture of white charcoal and a white gel pen.
The sketch was done with a 15″ dob using a 20mm Nagler as well as a Lumicon UHC filter.
The SQM-L was 21.24
Thanks
John Karlsson
Vernon B.C.
Canada