Month: March 2011

Sunspots and the Significance of Foreshortening

J. Aceto, a high school student with aspirations to attend the Maine College of Art, drew these two images of solar active region 1108 based upon photographic images taken by my astronomy students.

The images show the active region as it appeared near the sun’s E limb. The first drawing in the series shows a foreshorted image of the active region. The foreshortening of sunspots near the sun’s limb was first noted by Galileo. He used his observations and understanding of this phenomenon to prove that sunspots were on the sun (not transiting objects, which would remain the same size thoroughout a transit). The second drawing shows how far the the active region has moved in a 24 hour period due to the rotation of the sun.

solar active region 1108
observed from S. Portland, ME
observing/imaging sessions: September 16 and 17, 2010
drawing: March 23, 2011
pencil

submitted by J. Stetson

Hey Artists!

I send you my sketch of the galaxy M. 106 in Canes Venatici.
This is an easy and unusual object with a bright northern arm and a faint and diffuse
one to south.
To me, the nucleus looked bright with two parts.This was a really interesting object.
I used crayons (watercolour) on black paper. More info on my sketch.
The observation was made outside Trondheim, Norway.
Thanks for all nice comments on my sketches!

Clear sky to all !! Per-Jonny Bremseth.

A Nebulous Study

Hi all,

Sydney’s skies have been terrible for a long time. Finally tonight we got a clear, cloudless and dewless night. And I wasn’t going to let a little Moonlight get in the way.

As Sydney’s skies are also loaded with light pollution, the full potential of the Eta Carina nebula isn’t realized. The Homunculus Nebula isn’t visible at 29X – it’s too small. However, its distinctive colour is visible, it is the bright, orangeish star.

This sketch was more a case of blowing out some cobwebs from my pencil case. Modest gear, short time, and a refreshing ale. A target I wish to revisit in the coming New Moon from a dark site.

Object: NGC 3372, Eta Carina Nebula
Type: Emission nebula
Scope: 8” f/4 Newtonian, dob mounted
Gear: RKE 28mm (29X) and OIII filter
Location: Sydney
Date: 23rd March, 2011
Conditions: Awful Sydney sky + last ¼ Moon.
Media: White pastel, black & white charcoal, white and coloured ink on black paper

Cheers,

Alex M.

Red Forest on the Sun

Today I’ve made a h-alpha sketch through my 60mm H-Alpha telescope. At 78x (9mm plossl) the large proms on the edge of the Sun’s disk showed a lot of detail. It was pretty hard to keep up with the constantly changing structures, when I finished the lower “tree” the little prominence above the main group had totally changed its shape! The drawing is made between 12.30 an 12.45 UT from Deventer, The Netherlands using a red pastel pencil on black paper.
Object Name Sun
Object Type Star
Location Deventer, The Netherlands
Date March 20, 2011
Media red pastel pencil on black paper
Kind regards,
Roel Weijenberg
www.roelblog.nl

From Ocean to Sea

Object Name: Moon Craters Letronne and Gassendi
Object Type: Lunar craters
Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Date: 1979-May-8
Media: graphite pencils on plain white paper; scanned to jpeg as original.
Equipment Used: 4.25 inch Newtonian; 192x
Observing Conditions: fair, calm
Aspects of Interests: The submerged wall of Letronne is very interesting, especially as a contrast to the steep walled crater Gassendi. Gassendi A and B are the small craters infringing on Gassendi’s North wall. Very dark in the middle suggests that they are deep and possibly young. Well defined details on all these objects except the walls of Mare Humorum to the South seen as very flat and without detail except at its Western edge where Gassendi lies across it. The area is mapped as Rima Mersenius. Illuminated walls are very bright. The maria are a very pale grey. I think Rima Herigonius is the bright light with distinct dark edge to the East of the group.
Thank you,
Jim Garasich

Lightning Moon

Object name and type: Moon
Location: Budapest, Hungary
Date: 8th March 2011
Media: Graphite pencil on white paper, Photoshop to invert.
Equipment used: 10×50 Scopium WA Binocular

The weather conditions were great, the Moon (at least a quarter of it :-)) was lighting outloud. It was beautiful and as this lightlyness was the most beautiful part of it I have tried to give it back on my graphic. Some of the craters were also visible with the binocular, especially the bigger ones between the dark and light border.

—
Dr. Hannák Judit
+36-30-542-68-80
hannak.judit@gmail.com

Ten Minute Tycho

Object name: Lunar crater Tycho and rays

Object Type: Lunar crater, rays

Location: York, UK

Date: 18th March 2011

Time: 20.30-20.40 UT

Media: graphite pencil, white paper

Instrument: Skywatcher Skyliner 152mm f8 Dobsonian, 25mm e.p.

As I took in the beauty of the full moon at perigee, I noticed a small black object zip across the face of the moon. I thought I’d probably seen a satellite, but, a minute or two later I saw another one, and then another one, and then another, and they were definitely birds. They were all travelling in the same direction: North. After waiting about half an hour and seeing about twenty of them, and trying to take in the jizz of the form, the best I could do was narrow them down to swallows and martins. Do they migrate at night? Well, if so, this was a unique way to see my first hirundines of the year.

Seeing was very wobbly, preventing me from using high powers on the scope, so I eased back into low power and sketched the crater Tycho and its rays, which you can also see with the naked eye as they splat half way across the face of the full moon. I like sketching fast; it forces me to find the key features first. Tycho itself is not huge as lunar craters go, but it’s visible because it’s young and its rays have not yet eroded away. It’s estimated to be about 100 million years old which means that some dinosaurs and mammals probably saw it hit; it must have been spectacular.

The crater is named after Tycho Brahe, one of my heros. His accurate measurements of the stars and planets led to the later discovery, by Kepler, that the planets move in elliptical orbits around the sun, which in turn is the basis of universal gravitation. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Tycho paved the way for our modern understanding of the universe. And he has a rather beautiful crater named after him too.

One of the things that I spotted for the first time was that there are fewer bright rays pointing west (top in the picture), suggesting that the impactor that formed Tycho came in from that direction.

Treasures of a Lion

The Leo Triplet – three galaxies M65, M66, and the NGC 3628.
It is a small group of galaxies located about 35 million light years away from Earth

Apparent Magnitude of the members is from 9,3 -10,4mag

March 6, 2011- I saw them in SCT 11″ (power of about 70x), in the Swan 40mm, with field of view 72 degrees !
The NELM was about 5 mag, sky was very clear.
These objects like magnification, if we had used it, the Triplet would have shown us a lot of details.

Yours sincerely Robert

Object Name: The Leo Triplet
Object Type (galaxies)
Location (Oborniki, suburbia, Poland)
Date (06-03-2011)
Equipment: 11″ Schmidt ; Cassegrain on CGEM, WO SWAN 40mm
Autor: Ignisdei (Robert Twarogal)

Crater Pythagoras at the End of Winter

On this last evening of winter just hours before the full Moon, my sky cleared enough to get out and sketch the Moon.
130 km. crater Pythagoras was well positioned on this evening for lunar sketching. Before the summer of 2009-laser altimeter reading taken by the Kaguya gave a crater depth of 4.5 km. with central peaks rising to 3 km. above the crater floor. At 130 km. in diameter, the terraced walls of the distant rim were nicely visible in moments of good seeing. Hugging the southeastern wall of Pythagoras, slightly larger Babbage (140 km.) with its old crumbled walls and large central crater Babbage A shared the spotlight here near the dark lavas of Mare Frigoris. If you follow the west wall of Babbage to the south, you arrive at 70 km. crater Oenopides with its shallow featureless floor.

Sketching Information

Pythagoras Crater on black 400 Series Strathmore paper using white and black Conte’ pastel pencils
Sketch Date: March 19, 2011, a time of favorable libration for this crater using a 13.1-inch f/6 Dobsonian telescope riding on an equatorial platform with a 6mm eyepiece for 333x at 05:05-07:00 UT
Seeing: Antoniadi III
Weather clear, calm, 32 degrees F (0 degrees C)
Lunation 14.3 days
Moon 99.6% illuminated
Colongitude 83.9°
Latitude Libration +07° 06′
Lunar Distance: Near Perigee
Rükl Atlas Pl 2

Frank McCabe

Hugh Prom Lift Off SW Limb

This afternoon, I saw a huge prominence lift-off on the sout western limb. I was lucky enough not only to view it but also to sketch it. It all happened so fast, I was amazed by the whole phenomenon!

When: Saturday 19 March 2011
Object name: Prominence SW of the sun’s limb
Location: Arnhem/Holland
Optics: Lunt 60 PT single stack
Eyepiece: 10 mm Pentax XW barlowed with Baader Abbe Zeis 2x
Media: Pastel red Conté a Paris no 3 on Black paper
Seeing : Great

Sketch by: Joost Becker