Pen and Ink – Page 13 – Astronomy Sketch of the Day

Majestic Swarm

NGC 5139 (Omega Centauri)
Sketch and Details by Dave Riddle

My attempt to sketch Omega Centauri caused me to recall the trials faced by Frederick Catherwood, the famed British illustrator, while he tried to capture the Mayan “idols” found in Central America during the early 1800s. As recounted in C. W. Ceram’s “Gods, Graves, and Scholars”, Catherwood faced the daunting task of reproducing forms that were utterly different from any any thing he had experienced before and “for a time his crayon simply would not function.”

I spent an hour or so studying NGC 5139 before starting my sketch. Using a 12″ Schmidt-Cassegrain at 100X, prominent stars chains, clumps of stars and mysterious dark voids made their appearance. At first glance, Omega had appeared as a rather structureless oblate globe of stars.

My original graphite pencil and ink drawing was made on the evening of April 18, 2005 with rather poor seeing conditions and a waxing gibbous moon over the desert of Namibia. The submitted drawing is a Photoshop interpretation of the sketch.

Dave Riddle

Pen and Ink Petavius

Petavius Crater
Sketch by Michal Repik

Michal Repik is a seventeen year old amateur astronomer from the Czech Republic. He has been sketching his astronomical observations for the last three years.

Information about the observation:
Date: May 5, 2008
Time (UT): 21:10
Telescope: Maksutov
Aperture: 127 mm
Focal Length: 1500 mm
Magnification: 200x
Observation place: Prague
Lunar colongitudo: 312.6°
Seeing: 2/5 (ant.)

Pickering’s Martian Penmanship

Mars: May – July, 1892
Sketch by Professor William Pickering

This series of Martian sketches was prepared by William Pickering in 1892. They were printed the article, “The Lowell Observatory, In Arizona,” by Edward S. Holden in The Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Volume VI, 1894, pages 160-170 at Google Books. Mr. Holden’s article featured Pickerings drawings along with comparison drawings made at the Lick observatory during the same Martian apparition. Holden expressed considerable concern over the conclusions Pickering and Lowell published regarding their observations of Mars:

The very essence of the scientific habit of mind is conscientious caution; and this is especially necessary in referring to matters in which the whole intelligent world is interested—as the condition of the planet Mars, for example. I may take as an example the telegrams regarding Mars sent by cable from South America in 1892 by Professor WILLIAM PICKERING, who is to be the chief observer at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. I quote two out of many such telegrams:NEW YORK, October 6, 1892. – The Herald correspondent at Valparaiso cables as follows: Professor PICKERING of the Harvard Branch Observatory at Arequipa says that he discovered forty small lakes in Mars.How does he know the dark markings are lakes? Why does he not simply call them dark spots? And is he sure there are forty?

NEW YORK, September 2, 1892. – Professor PICKERING of Harvard College sends the following to the Herald from Arequipa, Peru:

‘Mars has two mountain ranges near the south pole. Melted snow has collected between them before flowing northward. In the equatorial mountain range, to the north of the gray regions, snow fell on the two summits on August 5 and melted on August 7. I have seen eleven lakes near Solis Lacus varying in area from 80 by 100 miles to 40 by 40 miles. Branching dark lines connect them with two dark areas like seas, but not blue. There has been much trouble, since snow melted, in the Arean clouds. These clouds are not white, but yellowish and partly transparent. They now seem to be breaking up, but they hang densely on the south side of the mountain range. The northern green spot has been photographed. Many of SCHIAPARELLI’S canals have been seen single.”*

*Several of these canals were seen not only single but double at Mount Hamilton, do not know that they were so seen in Peru.

How is it known that there are two polar mountain ranges? How does he know that the flow will be northwards? And an equatorial range? Are not the gray regions so extensive that the description is, to say the least, indefinite? What is the evidence of “trouble” in the clouds? Is it certain that no clouds on Mars are white? How about the clouds “twenty miles high” reported by Professor PICKERING? Were they not white?

These and similar telegrams from South America regarding the happenings on Mars in the year 1892 were received by the astronomers at the LICK Observatory with a kind of amazement.

Ecliptical Obliquity

Lunar crater Albategnius
By Dale Holt

I awoke not particularly early at around 6am on Saturday December 1st, well it is
the weekend! I noted a fine gibbous Moon high in the South West from the bedroom
window. Hmm I haven’t made a Lunar sketch for a while, so out I went to the
observatory with my brew of tea and spent a while scanning the terminator for a
likely subject.

I picked out Albategnius. This is an ancient lunar impact crater 129km wide and
4.4km deep located in the central highlands. It is named after the Arabic Prince
and astronomer Al-Battani. The level interior forms a “walled plain”, surrounded
by the high, terraced rim. The outer wall is somewhat hexagon-shaped, and has been
heavily eroded with impacts, valleys and landslips. It attains a height above
4,000 meters along the northeast face. The rim is broken in the southwest by the
smaller crater Klein 44km wide and 1.5km deep.

The third prominent crater featured in my drawing is Halley to the North East of
Albategnius spanning 36km at a depth of 2.5km.

Telescope 14” F5 Newtonian reflector
Denk binoviewer with 2.5x nosepiece
x2 Celestron Axiom 23mm eyepieces giving 193x

Drawing on Black A5 Daler Rowney artist paper using Derwent pastel and water
colour pencils, conte sticks, black ink and blending stumps.

A New Dawn across the Bay of Rainbows

Northwest of the Sea of Rains is the 260 km. crater known as the Bay of Rainbows.
At the time of this evening observation the shadow of the terminator was crossing
the bay beyond 4 km. Heraclides E. A good one third of the bay floor was in
darkness but already Promontorium Heraclides and much taller Promontorium Laplace
across the bay were basking in the morning sunlight. A long triangular shadow from
the latter was seen extending westward. The sunlight was also descending the walls
of what remains of the crater rim known as the Jura mountains. My drawing does not
begin to capture the beauty of this view. East of the bay in the brightly
illuminated Imbrium basin are craters LeVerrier and Helicon both about 20 km. in
diameter. South of this pair are the much smaller craters Carlini and Carlini A.

Sketching

For this sketch I used: White copy paper, 6”x 9”, 2H graphite pencil and an ink
pen. Brightness was slightly increased after scanning.

Telescope: 10 inch f/ 5.7 Dobsonian 12mm eyepiece 121x
Date: 9-3-2006 0:30-1:15 UT
Temperature: 20°C (68°F)
Clear, calm
Seeing: Pickering 5/10
Colongitude: 32.4°
Lunation: 10.2 days
Illumination: 71 %

Frank McCabe

The Lost Treasure of Hercules

Messier 92: Globular Cluster

And yet, another one of those Globs – don’t worry, there are plenty, 29
in the Messier Catalog alone, but I am slowly pulling through, one more
down on the list and counting. All in all, I’d say: again not bad, measured
up to the years of life it cost me to draw it. You sit there at the telescope,
frozen to the spot in a never-ending struggle to decide, whether you’ve
seen the detail or not, whether you should draw it or not, your hands are
getting cold, your neck is getting stiff and the cluster simply keeps refusing
to turn out the way you want it or see it. Well, the longest journey comes to
an end, so here it is: M 92! I like to call it The Lost Treasure of Hercules,
because it is a great view, yet often overlooked due to its proximity to the
far more well-known M 13. Maybe next time you visit the area, remember to
make a little stop-over at M 92.

Date: April 15, 2007
Location: Kegelhaus, Erbendorf, Bavaria, Germany
Instrument: Dobsonian 8″ f/6
Constellation: Hercules
Seeing: II of VI
Transparency: I-II of VI
NELM: 6m2
Magnification: 133x
Technique: white pastel pens and white ink-pen on black cardboard

Sebastian Lehner

Lovely Limb

Crater Ingrahami

You have got to admit, on a clear winter night from the northern hemisphere the
full moon has a way of revealing itself and moving high and bright to the
meridian. After looking at the full moon through a telescope eyepiece you can be
quite moonblind for a while. Don’t make any sudden movements until your night
vision returns. This night was my rendezvous with the crater Inghirami. Crater
Inghirami is a Nectarian period crater (3.85 billion years old) and measuring 92
km.in diameter. This crater is southwest of Schickard and southeast of Vallis
Inghirami. The crater has an interesting floor with what looks like a low ridge
mountain range running across it. Inghirami crater is near the edge of the lunar
impact basin Mare Orientale. Below is my number 2 pencil and ink sketch on copy
paper of the region of Inghirami crater near both the terminator and limb.


Date: 1-3-2007 4:00 to 4:45 UT
Temperature: -2.2 °C (28° F)
Breezy, seeing was average
Antoniadi : III
13.1 inch f / 5.9 Dobsonian 6mm ortho ocular 327X
Colongitude: 83°
Lunation: 13.8 days
Illumination: 100 %

Frank McCabe

Repsold on the rim

A favourable lunar libration put the crater Repsold at a better
perspective than what one usually finds. And finding it on the
terminator made it an object for a quick sketch despite the obstacles.
It was only a few days before a June full moon so the moon was quite low
(from 50 degrees north lat.) even when near the meridian. Turbulence
and generally poor seeing kept things from looking sharp for more than
brief instants. And the mosquitoes were bad enough that at times they
cast long shadows across my sketching paper.   Sketch done using
graphite pencils, ink and some not entirely successfull applications of
whiteout.   I usually like to take longer with a sketch but the
mosquitoes kept the viewing short. North is more or less up and east is
to the left.   Viewed through 150mm f/6 Maksutov Newtonian with
binoviewer, 2x barlow and 23mm eyepieces.

Repsold is a rather large crater at approximately 110 kms diameter that
is known for a prominant rille of the same name that runs through it.
Some of the unusual highpoints in the sunlight of my sketch might be
part of that formation as they are oriented in an agreeable direction.
But being unfamiliar with that extreme limb crater, I cannot say for
certain. Sketching limb craters present its own unique challenges and I
find myself thinking more of the three-dimensionality of the crater as
you are no just ‘looking down’ onto the third dimension.

Gerry Smerchanski

Namibia Globular

Globular clusters display distinct “personalities” to an attentive observer. Some
appear as pale, starless discs in large aperture telescopes while others, like Omega
Centauri, begin to resolve in small refractors. Less frequently, they will display
subtle color. My sketch of NGC 6388 in Scorpius is an example of this. Using the
Sossusvlei Mountain Lodge 12″ Schmidt-Cassegrain with a 31mm Nagler (~100x), the
globular’s star-like core appeared to be weakly yellow. The tint disappeared at
higher magnification (250X/12mm Nagler).

The original drawing was done at the eyepiece using a soft lead pencil. I prepared a
copy based on this drawing and my field notes. First, a “smudge” of graphite was
dotted with acrylic ink. A garden variety Bic pen with blue ink formed the core —
and when color inverted — captured my visual impression of the yellow color fairly
closely. The nucleus was then enhanced with Photoshop and the entire drawing blurred
to simulate the rather poor resolution caused by the seeing conditions.

Dave Riddle
Smyrna, Georgia USA

Sundown at Gauss

At one day past full moon old luna was arching it’s way to the high point for the
night when I selected for my sketching target craters along the terminator on the
eastern side of the moon. Six craters larger than 45 kilometers in diameter are
included in this sketch. With only the highest points along the western rim being
touched by sun rays, it is sundown at crater Gauss. With Gauss measuring 177 km.
in diameter it is categorized as a walled plain crater and dates back to the
Nectarian age (3.9-3.8 billion years ago). Southwest of Gauss with the floor in
darkness except for the illuminated central peak we have crater Hahn, a formation
slightly younger than Gauss and smaller at 84 km. To the north of Hahn is a crater
of the same age as Gauss known as Berosus. It measures 77 km in diameter and its
western wall is not as high as that of its partner Hahn. The largest crater on the
western side of the sketch is Geminus at 86 km. It has a low central peak and no
crater rays, although it is the youngest of the craters in the sketch at about 2 billion
years of age. The smaller crater close to Geminus to the east is 47 km. crater
Bernoulli. And finally to the south of Geminus is crater Burckhardt at 57 km. in
diameter with small craters straddling it to the southeast and southwest.

Sketching: Graphite 2H pencils and India ink on
White 8.5”x11” copy paper
Telescope: 10” f/5.7 Dobsonian 6mm eyepiece
Time: 10-8-2006, 5:30-6:30 UT
Colongitude: 101.6°
Weather: clear, calm
Seeing : Antoniadi III

Frank McCabe