Precious Moments of Totality

Solar Eclipse
By Serge Vieillard

If you were about to experience the brief but awesome spectacle of a solar eclipse, would you take the time to immerse yourself in a sketch of the event? If you have a passion for sketching astronomical objects and events, you may find yourself attempting what Serge Vieillard did. On March 29, 2006, Serge and 14 other club members journeyed to the Sahara Desert in Libya to view the eclipse. Racing across the dusty landscape in 4x4s to arrive at the site on time, they set up to the southeast of the volcano, Waw Enamous. As the eclipsed deepened, they found themselves entranced by an indescribable atmosphere: the sky darkened, Venus appeared, shadows began to shift, Bailley’s Beads began to sparkle, leading finally to totality. With that, the immense corona blossomed before them while solar prominences emerged and evolved as the moon passed before them.

Rather than photograph this awe inspiring event, Serge chose to harken back to an earlier era of astronomy and he sketched it instead. Because totality would only last 4 minutes, he had to be fast and deliberate in his sketching method, observing with a Kowa 77 mm TSN-2 for wide views of the corona, and a Meade ETX-90 at 100X for viewing the prominences. During those brief 4 minutes, Serge sketched the main contours of the corona, and sketched in the positions of the dancing prominences. Immediately after totality broke, he spent the next several minutes finishing the details of the sketch while it was still fresh in his mind.

Serge used colored pencils to add color to the sketch. However, since he was drawing on white paper and would be inverting it after scanning, he used a technique adapted from his previous color observations and sketches of M42, the Great Orion Nebula. By pre-testing, scanning, and inverting the color values of several pencils, he was able to determine what colors would produce the best color once the sketch was inverted after scanning. The results speak for themselves in this outstanding illustration.

The entry from Serge’s website is included below in the original French. (Google Language Tools may be helpful in translating if you do not read French.) More of Serge’s incredible sketches can be found at his website: ASTRONOMIE AMATEUR OBSERVATION VISUELLE CROQUIS ASTRO.

Eclipse totale du 26 mars 2006, dans le désert Libyen, au sud est du volcan waw Enamous. Une aventure exceptionnelle que nous avons vécue avec 14 copains(es) du club. Découverte d’un pays, du Sahara, d’un autre mode de vie. Course effrénée des 4×4 dans la poussière pour être présent sur le site au bon moment. Une ambiance indescriptible, assombrissement du ciel, apparition de Vénus, des ombres volantes partout, les premiers grains de Bailly, arrachage des filtres et ça y est ! Couronne solaire énorme, nombreuses protubérances dont la visibilité évoluera au fil du phénomène selon de déplacement de la lune. J’ai tenté ce croquis, évoquant à l’ère du numérique une astronomie d’une autre époque, ambiance 1900, à l’oculaire de la longue vue L80 pour la couronne et de l’ETX x100 pour les protubérances. Les 4 minutes sont passées comme un éclair. Je n’ai eu le temps que de marquer au mieux le contour des différents panaches. Tout de suite après la totalité, l’image encore en mémoire, j’ai apporté la texture particulière et les finitions pour ce résultat étrange…