SwiMatt

It was an incredible summer day here today, and I hoped until now to be able to catch a couple of hours of night observation... high clouds appeared at around 21 and will not leave for hours or days. This might be it for the season, except lunar and solar. Won't have many days available to get out past 11pm for the next two weeks, and the season of no astronomical twilight is starting soon 😭 I vote to have longer nights in summer and viceversa

Great minds do think alike! 🤓

That looks like a great book @josefk, thanks! I'm taking similar inspiration from the art of nature journaling (e.g. https://johnmuirlaws.com/nature-journaling-starting-growing/). This is the style I try to take these days for my logbooks too. Date of observation, notes, details about the subject. Here is the whole page of the sketch above (notes in Italian, which is why I normally crop it).

I may or may not have taken inspiration from a certain sketch of M44 I saw on here a few days ago

I took some time to sketch the solar disk at 60x, and did what I could to sketch the regions I could see, at 100x - seeing wasn't great. All in all, lots of details visible and to my surprise I caught all the regions currently active on SpaceWeatherLive. I also marked down their magnetic classifications. Region 3654 has been very intricate and interesting to observe for 3-4 days now. One region does not seem to be labelled, just West of Region 3661 (top of my sketch).

Awesome work @AlcorAlly, your doubles' sketches are really nice to look at! For the red light, I use a small one that I can hold in my left hand while sketching, by closing the hand over it I can control how dim it is on the paper; when I need the left hand I either leave it down on the pad, or hold it in my palm (it's small enough that almost no light escape the fist) while using the fingers to track on the mount. It's not a super ideal setup, but it works. Holding it at all time can be annoying at first but I got used pretty fast.

Again outside to take a look at the Sun and in particular and a sketch of region 3654, which earlier today flared up. Cool stuff!

No mask, the tortillon is enough to be precise along the disk! But also, a mask would help, I'm just lazy.

Update, I tried applying graphite with a tortillon and then blending with fingers, I think it has a lot of potential for limb darkening. However it's difficult to control how much graphite you put on the paper, so go super light with it! In my sketches I ended up darkening parts of the limb too much! https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/421576-the-sun-on-27042024/

I had planned to just do a short first solar light today, but then @Richard N started talking about how to sketch the limb darkening and I just had to try right away First solar sketch, and already hooked. To give more of a spherical appearance to the Sun disk, I used a tortillon with some dark graphite (from blending the terminator of a Moon sketch a week ago), applied the graphite to the paper very lightly, then blended with a clean tortillon and/or fingers. Fingers are better for this, I think. This allowed me to actually put down on paper observed lighter areas on the limb that would otherwise have been impossible to add. BUT! This technique is difficult to control! Too much graphite applied in one spot and it will not show as a uniform blend - this shows very well in many areas of my sketch.

First light for my solar filter! (And first ever solar session) ☀️ I looked at a beautiful group of sun spots and tried to tease apart detail at 100x and 162x (the latter without success). Can't wait to do more and sketch it!

I was wondering the same but I haven't tried yet! My first try would be to simply "paint" the limb on very light gray (like a 2H and up pencil) and then blend it with a tortillon to have a gradient. Another option could be to apply the darkening directly with the tortillon after passing it lightly in some graphite. Some of these might give an effect soft enough to represent the darkening. I know nothing about feculae sketching, but if the book "Solar Sketching: A Comprehensive Guide to Drawing the Sun" is as good as "Sketching the Moon: An Astronomical Artist's Guide" (overlapping authors), I would definitely pick it up once I get serious with solar sketching I hope to see some of your experiments!!!

Getting ready for another summer in Scandinavia

While planets are porely placed at the time, there are a couple of deep sky object that are a must for any beginner! Right now, towards the Western horizon, you should be able to find the Pleiades (and your telescope should frame them neatly, if you have a ~25mm eyepiece)! They are bright enough that you can see them even before it gets very dark. They are roughly between the constellations of Taurus and Perseus. A good planetarium software, such as Stellarium, will show you the way. Otherwise, another favorite of these time of the year is the Beehive cluster, up in Cancer - that's visible until later! Try and tell us how it went

Are there other filters (e.g. colored filters) that are suggested for observation in white light? I'm planning buy a Baader ASTF very soon!

Absolutely right @josefk! I like coming on this side of the forum and getting inspired by what other people are doing. For me, it makes it feel like more of a community, if that makes sense - we exchange views and reports in a way that wouldn't be fully possible without sketching. Although the M44 you posted yesterday was from another universe (in terms of quality at least)

This won't last... 58 N is a terrible latitude to be doing astronomy during summer... 🥲

The seeing was quite poor here tonight, but I got a nice view of the Beehive, first through binoculars and then at the lowest magnification that my Mak allows - 60x. The building in which I live gave me an assist and protected my view from the moonlight. I ended my (cold!!) evening with a binocular look at the feet of Gemini where I think I glimpsed a washed out M35, and then found the Cheshire Cat in Auriga, but couldn't see any of the clusters in there.

After Joe's inspiring sketch, I wanted to give a go to M44 myself. The Beehive (or Praesepe according to Romans) was my first "real" deep sky object after the easy Pleiades. I remember like it was yesterday when I tracked it down with binoculars, one week into the hobby. A year later, tonight, there it was showing its beauty in my Mak (at an excessive 60x - but I don't have longer eyepieces) and I picked up my trusted HB pencil to draw it. Lots of fainter stars needed averted vision to pop in my field of view - the Moon is behind my building but its effects could be felt. Here's the inverted image. I find that I prefer sketching open clusters in pencil, while I will keep white-on-black techniques for more nebulous objects.

Thanks! I want to give this a go next time the Moon is visible from my balcony. I really like the way your sketch looks!

Nice sketch! I really like the way the highlights pop. Do you draw on black paper? Are the black shadows just the paper coming through, or are you also using the black pastel? And are you using pastel pencils for the fine details?

Such a lovely idea and sketch, @josefk! I really like the composition. I can also imagine how complicated it must have been! Great work!

Very beautiful sketch!

I wish the Moon was available from my balcony tonight. Unfortunately after a few amazing nights, now it's behind my building and tonight I was too tired to get elsewhere. I still managed to bag M38, M36 and M37, not without frustration. I had to search at 100x to increase contrast 🤣 Seeing was decent and it gave me some OK views at 166x !

I confirm! I kind of already forgot my first time on Saturn (I had owned a telescope for a few months when I saw it first)... but my first views of the Pleiades the night my binoculars arrived and the Beehive the night after, those are etched in my memory!