57 replies to this topic

[mdowns]

Let's try something different for a while. Instead of the constellation(s) of the month how about constellations of the season, with each thread running for three months? There are so many to list but just use your experience. If you see it best during normal evening hours of the spring, it belongs here. Off the top of my head, I can think of Leo, Leo Minor, Hydra, Corvus, Ursa Major, Sextans, Bootes, Virgo, Centaurus, Antila, Crater, Canes Venatici, Coma Berenices, add any others that you can think of. Could be an old scratch drawing or a new rendering from a stand-alone thread. If we see it best in the spring ,it would look great here in this thread as well.

[mdowns]

I'll start it off with these two,ngc 3945 and M3. Each drawn from observations outback with the c11 4 or so years ago.

 

 

[bphaneuf]

Let's try something different for a while. Instead of the constellation(s) of the month how about constellations of the season, with each thread running for three months? There are so many to list but just use your experience. If you see it best during normal evening hours of the spring, it belongs here. Off the top of my head, I can think of Leo, Leo Minor, Hydra, Corvus, Ursa Major, Sextans, Bootes, Virgo, Centaurus, Antila, Crater, Canes Venitici, Coma Berenices, add any others that you can think of. Could be an old scratch drawing or a new rendering from a stand-alone thread. If we see it best in the spring ,it would look great here in this thread as well.

I like this idea Michael. Lots of flexibility, and being tied to a season and not specific constellations it may result in more submissions from our friends below the equator. 

-b
 

[David Gray]

Nice idea – I agree – but the point Butch raises re our Southern colleagues minds

me that the title may needs altering to take account of it being Autumn for them…….

 

Cheers,
Dave….

[bphaneuf]

Nice idea – I agree – but the point Butch raises re our Southern colleagues minds

me that the title may needs altering to take account of it being Autumn for them…….

 

Cheers,
Dave….

A fair point, David.  Maybe Spring/Autumn; Summer/Winter, etc.  

[bphaneuf]

Okay, here goes.  Northern Hemisphere: One of my most rewarding observations was Abell 1656 in the Coma Cluster, in Coma Berenices.  After all that staring and sketching I had to take some time out in the club's warm-up room to put my eyes and brain back in order.  But to date this is the most galaxies I've seen in one FOV.  I will not vouch for ALL the labels, but that's the best I could do at the time.

 

 

         

 

-b

Edited by bphaneuf, 28 February 2024 - 04:26 PM.

[frank5817]

Messier 108 in Ursa Major

 

Date and Time: 05-03-2019
Scope: 16” f /4.41 Dobsonian. 138x with 13mm widefield eyepiece
8”x 12” white sketching paper, B, 2B graphite pencils, scanned and inverted
Averted vision was a very useful aid.
Seeing: Pickering 8/10
Transparency: average 4/5
Bortle 7 sky not very good
Frank

 

[mdowns]

I did this drawing of ngc 4216 last spring, as seen with the equinox. M68 was observed outback several years ago with the C11,leading to this drawing.

 

 

[Special Ed]

Nice drawings, folks.  

 

Michael, that is a really fine drawing of NGC 4216.  As I'm sure you know (but others may not), a supernova was discovered in 4216 back in January of this year.

 

Butch, I can see why tracking down all those faint fuzzies made your head spin.  

 

Speaking of tracking things down, a few years ago I hunted for and found the quasar in Virgo.  It was quite a starhop.  

 

 

 

[bphaneuf]

As a lover of compact galaxy groups, this may be my favorite, but in any event it's certainly near the top of the list - "the Box" Galaxies, or Hickson 61, also in Coma Berenices (with UGC 7190 for good measure).  3 of the 4 - NGCs 4169/74/75 are all at ~ 180 million ly distant and 4173 ~ 50 million ly, so not physically associated with the group.

 

 

         

 

-b

Edited by bphaneuf, 05 March 2024 - 06:21 PM.

[bphaneuf]

Wow.  I can't believe this thread isn't more active.  Where IS everyone?  Let me use a favorite of mine from Virgo to bump the thread a bit.  C'mon people!

 

M104, the Sombrero Galaxy is always a visitor favorite, being so bright.  Thankfully, though it doesn't rise very high here it at least gets above the worst of the extinction allowing for a fair amount of detail to be observed.  Hard to believe this was two years ago:
 

 

 

And just under a year ago from a wider perspective:

 

 

 

Let's go!

-b

[AstroBoyInTheCity]

As this is my first spring observing, I can't say that I've got any favorite views as of yet.

 

However, I did hunt down m104 for the first time last night, thanks to the inspiration of seeing bphaneuf's sketches! Thank you!

 

It was fairly low on the horizon and the half moon provided a fair amount of skyglow, but within about 20 minutes of observing I was repeatedly observing some very faint whisps within the core. What I ended up seeing doesn't really match a ton with what I've seen in other sketches, but the angle is correct... so I'm guessing at least some of this is accurate?

 

Images of the Sombrero are on the bottom left circle and upper right detail sketch.

Seeing: 3/5   Transparency: 4/7   Lowest Naked Eye Mag: 3.5

 

 

[Nightowl99]

Here’s one from last month’s new moon - NGC 3242, the Ghost of Jupiter, a beautiful planetary nebula in Hydra. My winter and spring observing site in the desert rarely has above average seeing, but a nice night let me crank up the magnification on this intricate planetary. One thing I look for at higher magnifications are three condensations like little balls of little spread around the inner ring.

 

 

NGC 3242
408x magnification
14” Dobstuff ETT coma corrected to f/5.5
APM XWA 4.7mm
2/11/24, Amboy Crater, CA
Seeing 4/5, Transparency 4/5

[cloudbuster]

Here's an observation from this month: NGC 2903. A large and bright galaxy in Leo with two spiral arms clearly seen. The N arm (left in the sketch) is the most obvious one with a brighter patch in it. To the W, the galaxy appears a bit flatter. The S arm is dimmer and more slender, but it does appear to continue further than the N arm with AV. In the center, the bar is seen with a bright and almond shaped core in the middle. 

 

 

 

 

Martijn

 

[mdowns]

These two older drawings are both from when I used the C11. Ngc 5897 in Lupus and Ngc 4526 from Virgo.

 

 

[David Gray]

Virgo

 

M104…...a much belated ‘scan’ (camera shot) of this galaxy sketch – not always at its best from this latitude........maxing ~25º altitude here.

 

 

NGC 4835 & SS Virginis…...the carbon star often looks particularly red.

 

 

Gamma Virginis / Porrima  bit of fun with Corel after stumbling on these forgotten records of the progress of the double up to and beyond Periastron in 2005. 

 

 

I had taken to adding careful impressions on to my Saturn intensity sheets, having decided to simply include them on whatever sheet was in use on the given nights when conditions were 7/10 and better. In 2000 Saturn was in Aries; but I had decided that through the years it would be passing through Virgo as the planned series was ending, and have included as far as 2012 (omitting 2013-15) for this compiling.

 

The idea being to record visual judgments of position angle (averaging 5 to 10+) and separation vs the airy disc size similarly. For consistency the same eyepiece being used.  In the case of closest approach the apodizer was used for the cleanest view: the diffraction rings much muted relative the disk and suggesting it was <0.3” around that date

The dots on the apparent orbit are for the beginning of each year……..Dave.

 

 

 

Edited by David Gray, 21 March 2024 - 05:07 PM.

[Warmvet]

Great sketches everyone!

 

One from Hydra. Globular cluster in a nice star field. Its 10th magnitude so would be fainter than I have sketched it here.

 

Cindy

 

 

[JMSchwartz]

This was my second rendition. Using the 32 inch F-3.3.

And the 28 inch F-4.3 Slipstream Telescopes, & ultimately through further renditions became the  2023 Astronomical League Sketch Contest 

winning sketch. Thanks for looking. 

CSS Always Jon 

 

Attached Thumbnails

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[JMSchwartz]

Rendition #8 another Take this was a different approach which I decided not to enter.

CSS Jon

Attached Thumbnails

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Edited by JMSchwartz, 24 March 2024 - 09:37 PM.

[Nightowl99]

Here are two nice spring galaxies from my March new moon observing session.

 

NGC 2841 is a nice inclined  spiral galaxy 53 million light years away in Ursa Major. At mag 9 it’s bright and takes magnification well. The tight spiral structure is visible in a dust lane that wraps around the oval halo and the bright nucleus reveals a nestled stellar core. This one reminds me a lot of M63, both are classified as flocculant spirals. 

 

 

 

NGC 2841
217x magnification
14” Dobstuff ETT coma corrected to f/5.5
APM XWA 9mm
3/9/24, Amboy Crater, CA
Seeing 3/5, Transparency 3/5, SQM-l 21.3

 

 

NGC 4535 is a face on barred spiral about 54 million light years away in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. It’s fairly bright at mag 10.7 but as a face on it has a somewhat low surface brightness, making the details difficult. The two main spiral arms coming off the central bar form an interesting thin S shaped curve. I could just pick out hints of these arms with averted vision. Bit by bit and piece by piece I could see the spiral arms, but never together to form the complete S curve.

 

 

 

NGC 4535
217x magnification
14” Dobstuff ETT coma corrected to f/5.5
APM XWA 9mm
3/9/24, Amboy Crater, CA
Seeing 3/5, Transparency 3/5, SQM-l 21.3

Edited by Nightowl99, 25 March 2024 - 12:06 AM.

[bphaneuf]

Seeing SN2024gy recently put me in mind of my first SN sighting a couple years ago.  It was quite by accident and I first took it for a stellar nucleus in NGC 4647 until looking it up the next day.  This was SN2022hrs.  I was also surprised to find a "star" next to M 60 was in fact an ultra- compact dwarf companion galaxy - M60-UCD-1.

 

         

 

-b

[mdowns]

A couple of near opposites from neighboring constellations,Centaurus and Lupus.The brightness of 5986 is a bit exaggerated,while 5139 is as viewed.Both as seen in the backyard when I used the c11 a few years back. 80lb white drawing paper,carbon pencils and a kneaded eraser. Pictured and then loaded on my computer to invert and add text.

 

 

[bphaneuf]

Here's the Owl Nebula in UMa.  This one took a bit of looking to make out the details, particularly the dark area in the southern half.  The central star winked in and out and the eastern rim appeared significantly brighter than the western rim.  Transparency was so-so.

 

 

-b

[cloudbuster]

The “Gold Dollar Galaxy” (NGC 4945) is a large edge-on (but not terribly bright) with some interesting features. First of all, the core zone appears to be missing. Instead, a brighter area is observed just above and right of it. Another brighter zone is a line under and left on the edge. The second nickname of this object is the "Tweezers Galaxy" because of these two brighter zones and I can definitely relate to that. Above and left, a bright star is seen, close to the edge where the galaxy is intruded as if the star is somehow responsible for that… Right of it a small brighter knot can be seen. With AV, the galaxy extends much further upwards and the field is littered with stars, too many to draw them all... This may be the most beautiful galaxy which us northerners can’t see in our hemisphere. Sketched with a 16″ dobson @129x.

 

Edited by cloudbuster, 27 March 2024 - 10:58 AM.

[frank5817]

Martijn,

 

Very nice sketch here, I really like this one.

 

Frank