Star Clusters – Page 50 – Astronomy Sketch of the Day

Globe of suns

7th May 2007. around 20:30UT
Novo Cice, Croatia

This sketch was created on plain A4 paper using graphite pencils and
fingers (for blurring). Later it was scanned and inverted in Photoshop
after some minor contrast and brightness adjustments.
I used 8″ F6 Dobson and 6mm Super Plossl Eyepiece. Magnification was
200x and field of view was 0.25°. Limiting magnitude was 5.50 and
transparency was very good.

M13 is beautiful globular cluster in Hercules. With an apparent
magnitude of 5.8, it is barely visible with the naked eye on a very
clear night. Its real diameter is about 145 light-years, and is composed
of several hundred thousand stars, the brightest of which has an
apparent magnitude of 11.95. M13 is 25,100 light-years away from Earth.

Vedran Vrhovac
www.inet.hr/~vevrhova/english/index.htm

Phil’s Sax

The Alpha-Persei cluster caught my attention during a naked eye observation in
Austria. Melotte 20 is very large: 3°! The brightest star in the sketch is Mirphak
(Alpha Persei). I used the ETX 70 at the lowest power of 8.75. The FOV is 4.8°. A
total of 88 stars are captured. The limiting magnitude at that power is mag 9.5. A
higher power would reveal more stars, but then the cluster-look is lost. This
cluster also has a nickname : the Saxophone Cluster. Mel 20 is not a famous target.
But the view is very rewarding. I made a naked eye observation of Mel 20 last year,
so a powered view was the next logical step. Here is an observation of the cluster
at a power of 8.75 with the little ETX 70. Melotte 20 has also a Collinder number,
but I like the Melotte designation (patriotic feelings rise, due to the fact that
Philibert Jacques Melotte had Belgian parents )
(North is up, West is right)

Location : Bekkevoort, Belgium
Date: February 4, 2007 , 19.00UT
Seeing: 2 on a scale of 5, Transparency : 2
Scope : ETX 70
Eyepiece : TV 40mm

Rony De Laet

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

Sword of the hunter

One of the most majestic places to visit with a small scope or binocular might be
the sword of Orion. With every new magnification this fascinating complex of
clusters and nebulae shows more hidden treasures. So here is a 4° Fov impression of Orions Sword.

Place : Bekkevoort,
Date : Feb 21, 2007
Time : 21.00UT
Seeing : 3 (of 5)
Transp. : 2 (of 5)

Scope : ETX 70 with 26mm SP, no filter.
Power : 14x
Fov : 3,9°

North is up (bino orientation)

The sketch is digitally ‘drawn’ with Photopaint, based on a raw EP-sketch. I hope
you like it.
Rony De Laet

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

Glowing triangle

Observing M 103 requires a good deal of magnification, in binoculars or
at low powers, the cluster is only visible as a more or less bright
nebula or a small and distant group of stars. At higher powers, its
specific triangular shape becomes visible, three stars forming its
corners with two brighter stars in its center, one of them with a
striking reddish tone. Its catalog number is BD+59 274, a class M1Iab
star, a Red Supergiant. The double star at the cluster’s Northern-most
point is Struve 131.

Date: November 16, 2006
Location: Erbendorf, Bavaria, Germany
Instrument: Dobsonian 8″ f/6
Constellation: Cassiopeia
Seeing: II of VI
Transparency: II of VI
NELM: 5m0
Magnification: 200x

Sebastian Lehner

Sphere of influence

7th May 2007. around 21:30UT
Novo Cice, Croatia

M5 is beautiful globular cluster in Serpens. M5 was discovered by the
German astronomer Gottfried Kirch in 1702 when he was observing a comet.
Charles Messier found it in 1764 and thought it a nebula without any
stars associated with it. William Herschel resolved individual stars in
the cluster in 1791, counting roughly 200 of them.Spanning 165
light-years across, M5 is one of the larger globular clusters known. The
gravitational sphere of influence of M5, (ie. the volume of space where
stars would be gravitationally bound to the cluster and not ripped away
from it by the Milky Way’s gravitational pull), has a radius of some 200
light-years.

At 13 billion years old it is also one of the older globulars associated
with the Milky Way Galaxy. The distance of M5 is about 24,500
light-years away from Earth and the cluster contains more than 100,000
stars up to perhaps 500,000 according to some estimates.

Vedran Vrhovac
www.inet.hr/~vevrhova/english/index.htm

Waiting for a return call

Messier 13 Globular Cluster

At the darkest part of a June night, you may spot a faint fuzzy patch way up high in
the south. Through binoculars, it appears as a gently glowing ball of light. With a
telescope, you can glimpse its true nature: a cluster of almost a million stars,
swarming together in space.

This wonderful object is known as M 13, because it was the thirteenth entry in the
catalogue of fuzzy objects recorded by the eighteenth-century French astronomer
Charles Messier. We now classify M 13 as a globular cluster. These great round balls of stars are among the oldest objects in our Galaxy, dating back to its birth some 13 billion years ago.

In 1974, radio astronomers sent a message towards M 13, hoping to inform the
inhabitants of any planet there of our existence. There’s only one problem: M 13 lies so far away that we won’t receive a reply until AD 52,000!!!!!!!!!!!

Sketch was made large on A4 black cartridge paper using white and colored pastels,
while viewing an astrophotograph…the sketch was then scanned and processed in Photoshop CS.

Peter Desypris
Athens, Greece

Two thirds the age of the universe

Drawing Globulars has always been a nerve-wrecking experience to me, so
many stars, all just lighting up for the split of a second in the corner
of your eye, what do you draw, what can you leave out, what the heck do
you really see?

The more delighting it is, when you suddenly realize, not only you
slowly get the hang of it, but the results are actually not even bad,
maybe even some of the better drawings in your whole catalog.
That’s exactly what happened with M 3, creating it was a pain, but the
result is highly presentable – at least that’s what I think!

The most fascinating thing about Globular Clusters is their age, they are
ancient, they’ve seen aeons on their way around the galactic center,
they’ve inhabitated this Galaxy ages before any human being has ever set
foot on this Earth, ages before Earth even existed. Reason enough to
catch a fleeting glimpse of those objects – measured by our lifespan,
not by theirs, they’re gonna be around long after the human race has
vanished again into the void.

Sebastian Lehner

Date: April 09, 2007
Location: Kegelhaus, Erbendorf, Bavaria, Germany
Instrument: Dobsonian 8″ f/6
Constellation: Canes venatici
Seeing: II of VI
Transparency: III of VI
NELM: 5m5
Magnificaton: 133x

A bridge of light to a city of stars

First light sketch of Messier 3 with a 16″ Meade Lightbridge telescope

Messier 3
Date: 4/20/07
Seeing: 3/5
Transparency: 4/5
Telescope:Meade 16″ Lightbridge F/4.5
Eyepiece: Meade 8.8mm Uwa
210 x

Sal Grasso

Diamonds at the feet of the twins

Open cluster M35 in the constellation Gemini

Here’s my first observation with the SkyWatcher 102/500. This 102mm 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.

Busy bees

Praesepe, Messier 44

Here is an encounter with an old friend, M44, visited with a new scope. The Skywatcher is a nice low power scope to enjoy large objects, like in this case : Praesepe. I tried to sketch the overall low power view, combined with the fainter stars visible at 33x. The higher power allowed me to separate ADS 6921 (in the Northern arm of the V shape) into four components : mag 6.4,7.6,9.2,10.4. You might need to squeeze your eyes to notice the fourth star in the sketch. When the sketch was finished, I counted (just for fun) the numbers of stars I’ve drawn. The number is 147.

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

Date : March 14, 2007
Time : 21.30UT
Scope : Skywatcher 102/500
Eyepieces : TV SP 40mm, SP 25 mm, SP 15 mm
Power : 12.5x to 33x
FOV: 3.3°
Filter : none
Seeing : 2.5/5
Transp. : 2/5
Sketch Orientation : N down, W left.
Digital sketch made with PhotoPaint, based on a raw pencil sketch.