My First Jupiter Sketch

[lexyastroman]

Ok i know i wont get into art college on the back of this, anyway here's a rough sketch last night of what i saw last night when there was a break in the clouds. Seeing was pretty poor around midnight i think it was, skywatcher capricorn 70mm, x2 barlow, 10mm eyepiece. I could see a bit more but it's only a rough sketch and my first attempt. PS. Could someone tell me the name of the moons as not sure?

thanks lex

[dweller25]

Great start - just a tip - the more you look the more you will see - in moments of good seeing you will be amazed how much detail can be seen.

Also Jupiter was only 13' high at midnight - later on in the evening (and the year) it will climb to three times that altitude and you will see a steadier image with more detail.

From left to right you saw - Callisto, Europa, Jupiter, Ganymede.

[spaceboy]

Got to start somewhere.

[Venus_is_my_friend]

Hey a drawing is a representation of what you saw and even without the titles I could have identified it as Jupiter and three moons, so your drawing does what it's meant to.

I don't know if they were that far away from Jupiter or that close together in the eyepiece, but a good tip for measuring distances is to use Jupiter itself. If you draw Jupiter on the page roughly to size of your little finger (or whichever finger you want) then using the diameter of Jupiter in the eyepiece you can work out how far to the left or right each moon is. Then use your finger to plot the distance to each object.

Be safe and warm.

[astropete]

a sketch is a representation of what you can see or have seen, to plot the moons around jupiter is all it takes, thats what i used to do, my jupiter was drawn around an old six pence and the moons were just pencil points, but the positions if drawn night after night gives a good recording of events.

a very good start. thanks for sharing.

peter.

[RikM]

That looks just like the sketches I draw in my log book to mark the positions of the moons. It's a good start. Sketching is great fun when you get into it.