Pastels – Page 14 – Astronomy Sketch of the Day

The majestic Swan

Hello everyone,

This last new moon I managed to pin onto paper the fabulous Swan Nebula, M17. After my previous new Moon’s view of it, I’ve been chaffing at the bit to get back to it. It is just so detailed, expansive, and subtle in features.

Most striking is the particularly dark hollow that is surrounded by the ‘neck’ of the Swan. It is so much darker than the surrounding space. Here is a tell-tale-sign of not only a dark pillar obstructing the light from the nebula, but that there is so much background light that comes from the background, invisible stars in this section of the Milky Way, that this dark pillar is just SO BLACK.

My previous look at the Swan had me see for the first time the highly textured nature of the ‘bird’s body’. This time, with the added time spent on looking at it, I noticed so much more extensive nebulosity that radiates out from the obvious avian shape. These extensions themselves are so very detailed.

As my big dob is of the good old push-pull type, the constant manual moving of the scope had my eye picking up this faint network of faint smokiness, that a ‘static’ image from a driven scope may not have allowed to be viewed so easily. Such as the heightened darkness immediately above and below the bird’s back and body, only to have more nebulosity sit above and below it, and even behind it. The effect was akin to a swan emerging from out of a soft bank of fog, and the bird’s movement through it causing a delicate disruption to the fog. Just beautiful.

This was a real challenge to sketch. So much of the object is so faint, needing averted vision to make it out. The mottled texture of the bird’s plumage was extraordinarily difficult to make out and lay down faithfully. So much of this is all averted vision work.

By far my most satisfying sketch to date. I hope you enjoy it too.

Object: M17, the Swan Nebula
Scope: 17.5”, f/4.5, push-pull dob.
Gear: 13mm Ethos (thanks Jim!), + OIII filter, 154X
Date: 30th July, 2011
Location: Mount Blackheath Lookout, NSW, Australia
Materials: White soft pastels & charcoal pencil on A4 size black paper, done over 3hrs.

Alex.

Jupiter and the Moon in Conjunction with the big Tower

Object Type: Conjunction
Location: Montreal, Canada
Date: October 13th 2011
Media: Pastel
On October the 13th while returning home after a lecture given by the astrophysicist J.P. Luminet, I saw this beautiful conjunction between our moon, Jupiter and the Dome of the Tower of the University of Montreal where I work. Our moon looked as if it rested on a small cloud. I sat on a nearby bench and took my time to sketched the view in my notebook. I copied the sketched at home on black paper, adding colors with pastel.

Jean Barbeau,
microbiologiste
Faculté de médecine dentaire
Université de Montréal
C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-ville
Montréal, Qué
H1T 1K3

The Trifid

Object Type: Open cluster, Emission Nebula, Reflection Nebula and Dark Nebula
Location: Foxpark, WY (Weekend Under the Stars – 2011)
Date: July 28, 2011
Time: 2355 MDT
Media: Conte Crayon and White Pencil on Black Paper
Observing Equipment: 18″ Dobsonian f4.5, Nagler 17mm Type 4 (121x)

Messier 33

location : plateau d’emparis (Ecrin, France)
date : 01/10/2011
media : black paper, pastel, pensil
instrument : Newton 254mm

M33 is visible at the naked eye (Gegenshein too). In the dobson, I guess a lots of details, many HII region in 2 big spiral arms and the 3 other smaller.
It’s very wonderful, as in a spacecraft between the two galaxy.
The most important is the sky, and I think if the seeing was lower I could see more details.

seize the night

Craters Frankin and Cepheus One Night Apart

With the Moon at waning gibbous phase, it continues to dominate the night sky for a few more days. On Tuesday night I carefully picked a target area for sketching so that I might catch it again the next night to see the change in shadows a day makes. Lucky for me the sky was clear both nights.
Crater Franklin (58 km.) is the larger and older of the pair and Cepheus (41 km.) has a visible impact crater namely, Cepheus A (13 km.) directly on its northeastern rim.

Sketching Information

First Sketch
Franklin and Cepheus craters on ebony black Canson paper using white and black Conte’ pastel pencils
Sketch Date: August 16, 2011, using a 10 inch f/5.7 Dobsonian telescope riding on an equatorial platform with a 6mm eyepiece for 241x at 05:00-06:10 UT
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Weather: Clear, calm, 59 degrees F (15 degrees C)
Lunation: 16.5 days
Moon 94.3% illuminated
Colongitude: 115.7°

Second Sketch
Same type of paper
Sketch Date: August 17, 2011, using same telescope and same eyepiece at 04:00-05:15 UT
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Weather clear, calm, 64 degrees F (17 degrees C)
Lunation 17.4 days
Moon 89.3% illuminated
Colongitude 127.3°

Frank McCabe

Full Disk Feast

This morning everything seemed to be right. The weather was absolutely great, the Sun was more active than I’ve seen so far this year and the seeing was above average. A good day to try sketching a full-disk h-alpha sun for the first time instead of an isolated prominence. First I made a blank disk with a soft white pastel. I took the sketch outside and filled in all the details I could see through the eyepiece of my 70mm solar telescope with white and black pastel pencils. All regions were very active, especially the middle one: it changed its shape within minutes. Sometimes little bright flare-like brightenings appeared and disappeared 2 minutes later. A wonderful sight! It took me one hour (from 08.00 UT – 09.00 UT) to complete the drawing. I scanned the (black&white) sketch and gave it a reddish color with Photoshop.
Object Name Sun
Object Type Star
Location Deventer, The Netherlands
Date August 2, 2011
Media Pastel on black paper

Kind regards,

Roel Weijenberg
www.roelblog.nl

A Jewel of the Southern Sky

Hello everyone,

There are few deep sky objects that are rarely matched to their impact through the eyepiece. When you first see them through the eyepiece, you lift your head for just one moment & think “Holy heck, did I just see that!”, and then rush back to the eyepiece .

NGC 6752 has to be one of those objects. This southern sky globular cluster in the constellation Pavo, is one cracker of a GC. A naked eye object, it is easily overlooked as it lies in a tremendously busy part of the sky, even though it is the third brightest globular cluster in the whole sky. My first look at it had me running around the place saying to folks “you gotta have a look at this through your scopes!”

Not only is it a bright GC, but it is jam-packed with lines, arcs, loops, hollows and figures made up of stars. One particularly lovely alignment of stars seems to trace a large looping love heart shape. My sketch shows it on the left side of the main ball. Sketch was done in just over an hour.

This GC is one big sucker. The mistiness that reaches out from the core is very expansive. The number of resolved stars is wicked. This GC’s reach was huge, even though transparency of the sky wasn’t brilliant.

This is one target that I would really love to have a squiz at through a monster dob. I might even run the risk of trashing my night vision with it this way, J.

I can only hope that this sketch evokes some of the immense beauty of this cluster. It is just WOW!

Alex.

Object: NGC 6752, globular cluster in Pavo
Scope: 17.5” f/4.5
Gear: Unitron 16mm Konig, 125X, 33.6’ AFOV
Date: 2nd July, 2011
Location: Wiruna, Ilford, Australia
Media: White pastel, white charcoal pencil & white ink on A4 size black paper.

Moon visits the Scorpion

On holiday in France I witnessed a beautiful conjunction between the Moon and the constellation Scorpius. Sketching the background with a pastel pencil was the most difficult task to do. I think I will use a chalk pastel next time for a smoother result. There is also still some work on the stars (I almost never draw naked eye stars). On the other hand the glow around the Moon looks very nice. Hope you like my holiday souvenir.

Clear skies
Jef De Wit

Object Name: Moon and constellation Scorpius
Object Type: moon and asterism
Location: Louroux-Bourbonnais, France (46°33’ N 2°51’ E)
Date and time: 7 August 2011 around 20.15 UT
Equipment: naked eye
Medium: color pastel pencils on black paper, Antares and Moon were redraw digital, process with Paint

Crater Clavius

Among the large craters of the lunar southern highlands, a nearly 4 billion year old impact stood out on this evening just after local sunset. This crater is 231 km.diameter Clavius. Clavius is blanketed with a sizable number of craters and numerous craterlets. At the center of this large crater are the reduced remains of the once regal central peaks. The atmosphere was not steady enough to pick out cratelets less than 3 km. never the less, the view was pleasing. Crater Clavius is famous for its semicircular crater sequence of decreasing size beginning with 56 km. Rutherfurd at the inner southeastern wall and continuing with 28 km. D, 21 km. C, 13 km N, 12 km J and 7.5 km JA. The north-northeastern rim of Clavius has a large crater resting upon it and most of its rim is just catching the light of sunrise. This 52 km. diameter crater is Porter. Much of the floor of crater Clavius remains smooth which implies the flow of melted rock in the past. Some geologists speculate it is from some of the ejecta cast outward during the formation of the Orientale basin. Some small secondary crater chains point back in that direction.

Sketching:
For this sketch I used: Canson sketching paper , 9”x12”, white and black Conte’ pastel pencils and blending stumps. Brightness was adjusted after scanning.

Telescope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian and 6 mm eyepiece 241x
Date: 7-10-2011 01:15-03:00 UT
Temperature: 27°C (80°F)
Partly to mostly cloudy, breezy
Seeing: Antoniadi III-IV
Co longitude: 21.4°
Lunation: 8.69 days
Illumination: 70.1 %

Frank McCabe

Bullialdus – July 10, 2011

2011 07 10, 0255UT Bullialdus
Erika Rix, Ohio, USA – www.pcwobservatory.com
Bulllialdus: Complex crater from Copernician period (-1.1 billion yrs to present day), Lat: 27.7 deg south, Long: 22.2 deg west.

Zhumell 16”, 21-7mm Zhumell, 257x, no filter
Eyepiece sketch on Strathmore Artagain paper, Conte’ crayon, charcoal

Temp 20C, 92% humidity, S: Antoniadi III, T: 2/6
Phase: 65.5deg, Lunation: 8.75d, Illumination: 70.7%
Lib. Lat: +5deg21’, Lib. Long: +2deg21’
Az: 212deg51’, Alt: 23deg30’

My first thought was to get out my Rite in the Rain paper and charcoal, but that terminator line was looking very dramatic and I decided to try another lunar sketch with black paper and white pastels. I chose the white on black because it can be a lot quicker to draw highlights than to draw shadows and I knew there would be a race against time to sketch on the terminator line. Thanks to my friend, Rich Handy, for introducing me to this media. I’ve found it invaluable for my h-alpha solar work.

Something didn’t really look right to me during my observation. It was only when I called it a night and came back in the house that I realized that Bullialdus A looked a lot larger (and Bullialdus B for that matter) than normal. There’s not a real sharp northern edge to Bullialdus A. It almost has a plateau-like bridge connecting it to the crater Bullialdus. The lighting played against that (or that explanation seems reasonable to me) to make it appear larger than normal.