Star Clusters – Page 49 – Astronomy Sketch of the Day

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

Twins Gems

Hi folks,

Here’s my first observation with the SkyWatcher. This rich field scope gives a whole
new perspective on deep-sky objects. With a SP 26mm EP, I get a whopping 2.7 degrees
field of view at a power of x19. I hope you like the view.

Date : March 8, 2007
Time : 20.30 UT
Seeing :2.5/5
Transp. 3/5

Digital sketch made with Photopaint, based on a raw pencil sketch made behind the EP.
N down, W left orientation.
Rony De Laet

http://www.geocities.com/rodelaet, my personal website.

Silent Hunter

NGC 457 is a beautiful Open Cluster in the Constellation Cassiopeia with
a pretty interesting shape: the two brightest stars, which glow in a
warm golden-yellow, form the two eyes of an owl, the rest of the stars
comprise the beak, the wings, the body and the claws, hence the name
“The Owl Cluster”. It is not difficult to draw and easily accessible with all
kinds of telescopes and thus well worth a visit.

Date: December 23, 2006
Location: Erbendorf, Bavaria, Germany
Instrument: Vixen Newtonian 4.5″ f/8 on Vixen GP
Constellation: Cassiopeia
Seeing: II-III of VI
Transparency: III of VI
NELM: 5m0
Magnification: 100x
Technique: pencil on white paper, digitally enhanced in Photoshop

Regards,
Sebastian

Open and close

Melotte 111

Hello sketchers,

What is called the second closest star cluster to our sun? Looking at it with a
scope is of little use, because the grouping covers about 5° of sky. Some of its
stars look so bright in a scope, as if one can almost touch them. So here it is, my
impression of this beautiful naked eye cluster. I used the lowest power available,
but even the fov of 3° is not large enough to cover the cluster. So the sketch is a
composite image of overlapping observations. Because of the low power, the sky-glow
washes out al stars fainter than mag 10.9. I hope you like my impression.

Date : May 5, 2007
Time : 22.00UT
Scope : SkyWatcher 102/500
TV SP 32mm eyepiece
Power : 15
FOV: 5°
Filter : none
Seeing : 2.5/5
Nelm : 5.1
Sketch Orientation : N up, W right.
Digital sketch made with a digital tablet and PhotoPaint, based on a raw pencil sketch.

Rony De Laet

http://www.geocities.com/rodelaet, my personal website.

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

Kemble’s Cascade

Here is an observation with a low power scope at x14 (made on 2/15/07 around 21.45
UT). The fov is 3.8°. The small ETX is great for rich field views. The object is
easy to find with a pair of bino’s when going straight up from Algol to Mirphak and
continuing for about 9 degrees. The cluster at the end of the cascade did not reveal
much detail with this power, but I only wanted to give a general impression of the
scene. High clouds were interfering my site, and with my limiting magnitude.

The raw sketch was made at the EP with a HB mechanical pencil. The final sketch was
digitally rendered in Photopaint (thus eliminating the tedious scanning procedure).
North is up, matching a binocular orientation.

Rony De Laet

http://www.geocities.com/rodelaet, my personal website.

Grand gathering of ancients

Although the light pollution from my residence severely limits deep sky observing;
I took advantage of unusually transparent seeing conditions to observe some bright
galaxies, globular clusters and planetary nebula. My favorite globular cluster
targets are M-5, M-92 and M-15. On this evening M-5 was well positioned for
observing just after dark. The appeal of M-5 for me is the bright glowing egg
shaped core with arching sprinkles of stars curving out from the center. As you
move out from the core the star density gradually drops off creating a very
pleasing view.

M-5 glows at magnitude 5.6 and is located about 20 minutes of arc north and west
from 5 Serpentis. This globular is approximately 13 billion years old at a
distance of 24,500 ly from us. The distance across this great ball of tens of
thousands of stars is about 165 ly.

Sketch:
Date and Time: 6-9-2007, 315-3:45 UT
Scope: 18” f/5 Dobsonian. 12mm eyepiece 167X
8”x12” white sketching paper, 4B soft charcoal pencil,
blending stump, scanned and inverted
Seeing: Pickering 8/10
Transparency: Excellent 4/5
Nelm: 4.8

Frank McCabe
Oak Forest, Il.

Of cloisters, comets and clusters

Back in the late spring of 2004 I had the opportunity to attend an astronomy
evening at the old Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) at Herstmonceux in
Sussex, England. The weather was dreadful, stormy and rainy, when the
evening began, but by the time the lecture had finished the skies were
clearing rapidly and we were able to catch sight of Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT),
a fleeting visitor gracing the region of the ‘Beehive’ cluster (M44) at this
time. The comet was just visible as a naked eye object, but binoculars gave
the best view. This is a reworked pastel and acrylic sketch from my
original, very hastily scribbled graphite binocular sketch. One of the
distinctive copper observatory domes provides foreground interest.

Sketch details:

10 x 50 Zeiss binoculars

16th May 2004, 23.05 UT

RGO, Herstmonceux, Sussex, England

Coloured and white chalk pastel (plus white acrylic for the cometary nucleus
and star images) on black Canford card

Sketch size 8″ x 10″

Sally Russell

Berkshire, England

Naked eye bull

Here is a lawn chair observation under the freezing Austrian sky at 800m asl. It is
a simple but pleasant sketch of the Bull’s face. I was surprised to notice 3 pairs
of stars. The sky was not perfect dark, so there should be more stars to be picked
out from the cluster. Anyway, scopeless stargazing can be fun ! No cooldown time
needed. My legs and hands cooled down anyway at -9°Celsius. (a solid fuel hand
warmer is a must have)

Location : Bischofshofen, Austria
Date: Dec. 25, 2006 , 20.30UT
Seeing: 4 on a scale of 5, Transparency : 4
Air Temp.: -9° Celsius
Naked eye observation
Rony De Laet

http://www.geocities.com/rodelaet, my personal website.

Pair of Cherries

The object is “h x Perseii” the double cluster in Persei, through the
telescope it seems to be a pair of cherries hanging on a little tail.

The telescope is a Meade 8″ and observing through a Swan ocular 36 mm
with a big field of vision. I made it with a pencil on a white paper but with some
problems, because the night was very bad, almost covered by clouds moving very
fast, that covered the image through the telescope. It was very hard to sketch in these
conditions, but I was enjoying it very much. This is the original hand made with and
later changed to negative with the computer.

The date: 14 October 2006 in Guadalajara, Spain.

Regards.
Leonor