Pastels on Black Paper – Page 5 – Astronomy Sketch of the Day

Southern Jewel

Hi all,

This October New Moon saw me attend for the first time the Ice In Space Astro Camp. The forecast threatened thunderstorms, but as luck would have it, the clouds parted to give us a great view of the sky. Thunderstorms did happen, but we only saw the glow of the flash of lightening from a massive storm system that lay behind a ridge.

My first sketch of the night was of 47 Tuc (NGC 104). This massive globular cluster is considered to be the remnant core of a galaxy long ago swallowed up by our Milky Way. There is at least one other remnant core, that being Omega Centauri.

The view of 47 Tuc through my 17.5” is nothing but astounding. At 125X the whole FOV is filled with countless stars. Its core is very compact and extremely bright, and the reach of the remaining ball of stars is impossible to determine its limits. Transparency was a little lacking, but you take what you get sometimes.

For once I added a FOV ring around the subject. My customary ringless sketch lacked a little something with this one as the field doesn’t extend to the edge of the page, the excessive blank black caused a lack of context. The FOV ring this time I feel gives that context to the sketch with only a small amount of extraneous stars lying just outside the ring.

An interesting comparison is between 47 Tuc and Omega Centauri, the two largest globular clusters in the sky. Omega’s core is larger in apparent size, while 47’s is much more compact and intense. This makes for an easier pick-up of ‘fingerprint’ patterns within Omega, while these patterns are much more subtle and even fickle in 47 Tuc. Still, these differences make for their distinct & unique qualities.

This was a challenge to sketch faithfully. As most of the stars in this cluster are actually quite faint on their own, it became more of a matter of attempting to lay down an impression of the collective features. The patchy ‘mini clusters’ around the perimeter, the suggested arcs and lines, and the distinct three ‘dark’ spots on the core, one of which is more of a bar that lies above two of the spots.

I hope you enjoy this sketch.

Alex M.

Object: 47 Tuc (NGC 104)
Scope: 17.5” f/4.5 push-pull dob
Gear: 16mm Unitron König, 125X
Location: Lostock, NSW, Oz
Date: 30th October 2011
Media: White pastel pencil and white gel pen on A4 size black paper
Duration: 1.5hrs.

The Pleiades and the Moon

Object: The Pleiades (M45) and the moon
Object type: Open cluster/moon
Location: Montreal, Canada
Date: December 8th, 2011
Media: White pastel on black paper, digital retouch

I marked the date in my agenda: The beautiful Pleiades and an almost full moon side by side. Something not to be missed. And the conditions were good: no clouds and a comfortable 3°C.

My 15 X 70 binoculars were the perfect instrument for this observation as the two objects could fit within two field of view. A sketch had to be done…

Jean Barbeau

Clouds Spoiled the Occultation

Hi.
Yesterday (October 31st) I went to see interesting occultation. The star Xi Sagittarii was to be obscured by the Moon. Unfortunately, five minutes before the occultation the clouds came. What a bad luck.
So I have only a sketch of the Moon and Xi Sgr in short distance from each other 🙁

Object: Moon & Xi Sagittarii
Date: October 31st, 2011
Time: About 18:25 (6:25 PM)
Place: Nowy Sącz, Poland
Equipment: Binoculars Bresser 10×50
Technique: White pastels on black art paper. Tooling, levels, color, light in GIMP2
Author: Aleksander Cieśla (Wimmer)

Two Days of Incredible Solar Activity

Object type – Huge filament and prominence
Location – Wilp, The Netherlands
Date – November 12 and November 14, 2011
Media – Pastel pencil on black paper, color with Photoshop

The largest prominence and the largest filament I have ever seen, both visible at the same time! It was a fantastic view and I made two sketches of them, two days apart. On November 14, the huge filament blew a large part of itself away from the Sun at the exact moment I was observing, creating a thin candle-like flame above the surface. A remarkable sight. Clearly the Sun is getting more active every month. What it’s got left in its suprise box while creeping towards solar maximum? Can’t wait to find out!

Kind Regards,
Roel Weijenberg
www.roelblog.nl

Conjunction of Moon and M44

While reviewing my log book I came across this sketch of the conjunction of the Moon and M44, May 10, 2008 as seen from my backyard in Orleans, Ontario, Canada at about 10:10 local time. The sketch was made with white pastel on black paper and scanned into the computer, No processing was done. The seeing was very good that evening. My log comments that at 200x in my 8″ Dob everything was very steady. I was struck by the beauty of this conjunction especially with the earthshine on the moon.

Clear skies,
Gordon

Crescent Nebula – NGC 6888

I made the sketch at the Okanagan Observatory on July 9 2011.
I used pastels on black paper along with a brush and smudging stump. The stars are a mixture of white charcoal and a white gel pen.

The sketch was done with a 15″ dob using a 20mm Nagler as well as a Lumicon UHC filter.
The SQM-L was 21.24

Thanks
John Karlsson
Vernon B.C.
Canada

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.

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

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

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