Hello to all- Allow me to introduce myself. I am Mark Seibold. I am new to this forum. I was inspired about a year ago to really start serious pastel sketches of the sun through my h-alpha solar telescope after I saw a sketch by Erika Rix and another by Wes Cowley, both appeared in Spaceweather.com. I submitted mine and the NASA physicist Tony Philips posted it for three days from Oct 13th ~ 15th. I began other works and this inspired an art contest for the Mercury transit of the sun on Nov 8th. I had only been doing a camera on a tripod for time exposure images of the night sky with landscapes below - I was interested to see some comments here that others posted to chose a sketch over a photograph- I tend to agree now and you may see why. *see at >

You can view all these works - Of all places, I have most of them in a Myspace.com > www.myspace.com/marksolarprophet

I wish I knew of the contest here. Perhaps I'll enter the next one. - Mark Seibold