SwiMatt

This is fantastic @Roy Challen! It's mind boggling to think about it 🤯

In addition to the very good point raised by @Tomatobro, the way NASA and ESA are financed is always subjected to political and public opinion whims. NASA's Artemis started in the early 2000s, and funding was cut and re-instated by different presidents. Additionally, giving different tasks to private commercial enterprises (such as Space-X) will always be an inherent risk as the primary goal of those is not progress or landing on the Moon, but making money (this goes beyond my personal feelings about the dude at the top) - any change of mind on their side, or extra unpredictable costs (normal in such a complex and dangerous endeavor, as the US and soviet programs taught us) will lead to delays.

For ESA, the situation is even worse: the Aurora program to explore Mars was launched in 2001 or so, and I remember as a teenager being very excited and very disappointed about having to wait 20 years to see humans on Mars... but some of the countries that provode major funding to ESA are against human exploration (too costly, too risky, not necessary for scientific/commercial purposes) - which put the whole Aurora program in jeopardy and now no-one remembers about it except those of us who were nerds of it back in the day. 

Fundamentally, as long as space exploration doesn't have a defendable and materialistic raison d'être (commercial, geopolitical, warfare...), it will never be a priority for anyone. Will we get there? Possibly, I think for the first time in years we are very close to it happening (should happen next year!), but any set-back, accident, new war might set us back years or decades.

Actually, one of the criticisms in the early parts of the video - the project is too decentralized, too many actors, too many parts are given to third parties to develop - is a bit naif: this has been done for decades and we keep going to space with very few accidents. I think the real problem is financing. And also, again, commercial enterprises don't care about the Moon or Mars. They do it for branding and because any technology they will develop thanks to big countries subsidies they will be able to sell without any money every getting back to the tax payers who provided the money for those subsidies... just saying.

Great job @josefk. Nice seeing that you're also venturing into solar observation, and very nice sketch!

P.S.: so, when can we expect your purchase of an Halpha telescope?

Love these, @AlcorAlly, keep them coming! And thanks for the descriptions and notes that come with the sketches.

Thank you @Stu @John and @IB20 for the answers, and sorry @Roy Challen for derailing the thread about your great sketch!!!

You make it sound like I need to get myself an Ha telescope, @Roy Challen! Damn this forum 😂

15 minutes ago, Roy Challen said:

Since I got the Daystar, it became my most used telescope by far. Over three years in, it still gives wow moments 😀

Did you have the same passion with white light observing? I'm loving white light but I don't see it becoming my favorite type of observing, and I wonder if an Ha telescope is a completely different "game"...

That's really great! Makes me wanna get an Ha telescope 🫠

3 minutes ago, AlcorAlly said:

Great sketch @SwiMatt, I love the drama you captured in it. Thank you for sharing, keep them coming! 

 

Too good! Thank you 🙏

4 minutes ago, josefk said:

Hi @SwiMatt nearly all my pastels are Faber-Castell Pitt Pastels. They in the pencil format - i.e not pastel sticks - that would be messy fun in the dew!

Are the Lyra ones you mention also in the pencil format? I like trying new ones...

They are in stick format. So is the Rembrandt. I haven't tried them on the field as of yet (and we don't generally get too much dew here, luckily - but we get wind) so it might still work well for me. I will keep you posted. I find pencils great for detail work, but at least the white I have does not pop enough for what I want.

4 minutes ago, josefk said:

i have "field pastels" and "desk pastels" here - the field pastels can get a bit soggy/sticky in damp autumn/spring nights. I also put mine on  a heater some mornings to dry them back out 💧💧💧

Can you name any brands? I'm eyeing a gray-tones set by Lyra. My pencils are Koh-i-Noor, but my main white is a Rembrandt, and it's simply amazing. The highlights pop even if you laid down a thick coat of black (although that will also depend on the tooth of the paper). 

Nice! The light touch really came to life! 

Thank you @josefk and @Ceramus! I love how rich in texture and contrast pastels are, not only for astro. Recently I tried to work more with pencils (easier to bring on the field), but I keep coming back to the beauty of this medium. 

I had a go sketching the Moon with pastels yesterday evening. I was looking for an easy subject to start and ended on Aristoteles and Eudoxus, close to the terminator for shadow contrast but not on the terminator to avoid complications.

I told myself to ONLY sketch the craters, to not go close to the terminator. However, the moment I started to put down shadows and see the sketch come alive, I got caught by a weird mania and I ended up sketching the mountainous chain surrounding Mare Serenitatis. 

It was a wonderful, although interrupted time: I started the sketch at 21.35 but finished it only at 23.15, because in between our newly adopted puppy needed to go outside. Seeing was not great and getting worse prompting me to switch down from 200x to 120x mid-way. 

If anything, I feel that pastels require more patience than pencils, and a strong trust in the process. While I was putting down the white lines, the sketch looked like nothing could come out of it, but the shadows transformed it under my eyes, especially when I started adding the boulders between the craters and the terminator. It was a great feeling to see the painting becoming somewhat alive!

7 hours ago, YogSothoth said:

Great sketches. I love sketching the sun. No dark adaptation or fiddling about trying to see with a red torch. Mind you, I still like to sketch clusters and doubles. 

The problem is that I'm losing the habit to sketch when it's dark. The other day I was getting frustrated sketching the Moon at dusk, because I couldn't see the paper. It took me a minute to realize that it was getting dark and I wasn't using a light 🤣

49 minutes ago, John said:

Nice moon this evening. Many lovely features. The Rupes Altai escarpment is looking very nicely defined as are the crater pair Messier and Messier A in the Mare Fecunditatis. Much more to see as well 🙂 

I spent some time looking at Aristoteles, although seeing wasn't great. Had to limit magnification at 120x, but it was beautiful! I love this time of the month

49 minutes ago, PeterStudz said:

In my rather light polluted back garden M27 is really improved with a filter. The difference is significant. Without I can just about make out an ill defined fuzz with direct vision. On a poor night I’ll need averted vision and it’s easy to miss. With a decent UHC it comes alive and I can even make out its wings. An OIII isn’t quite as bright (wings just there), but details in the interior are better than the UHC. Really looking forwards to messing around with M27 this year. 

What aperture do you have, @PeterStudz? Your description of M27 without filter resonates with my experience with 5 inches in my Bortle 7-8 skies, and I'm wondering whether I should add a UHC to the buying list.

It's basically summer here, meaning that the only thing I can currently observe without destroying my sleep pattern is sunlight - either direct or reflected. So yesterday afternoon I enjoyed a good time under the Sun and sketched the whole disk with all its activity - 9 active regions! Here's the page from my sketch-/logbook:

In the evening I looked back at the Moon for the first time in a month or so, and found that my sketching skills got very rusty! I'm not very happy of the final result for this one, but it was a valiant effort on my part given how tired I was this weekend. I sketched Crater Gutenberg and some of the area surrounding it - at 200x. Like always, I don't pick my targets before being out, I prefer to let myself like something: I was captivated by the ear-like shape of the formation, and the dome/hill laying just further down along the terminator. This sketch was not as finished as I would have liked, but tiredness came over me and sketching at 200x with manual controls is a busy matter.

Had a double combo Sun-Moon today, I might post two sketches later (although I'm not too satisfied with them...)

Very happy for the time under the Moon, I hadn't seen any since mid-April! Crater Gutenberg looked stunning.

After missing last night's show due to clouds and tiredness, I couldn't miss the opportunity to do some sketching of this beautiful and immense solar region.

Is it me or this region resembles the British Isles? 😂

By the way, crossing my fingers for tonight, there are chances for a second night of good aurora! 

Sun spots and kitty, what better setup? 🤩

Clouded over here 😭 happy looks to those who celebrate 🤣

Amazing work Marios! You got such remarkable detail.

What medium did you use to sketch this? Is this with pencils?

Nice work! Drawing in a rush is not ideal, but it can be a great exercise - especially with this type of hobby. You still managed to take in lots of details, that's great! 

These look very nice @Lurcher. 

I wish I could say I share the struggle of not being sure what I'm looking at, but I don't have enough aperture for that. If I find a faint fuzzy, it's probably the Messier I was looking for 😂