Moon Sketch: Hansteen and Billy through the 25"

[Roel]

Tuesday night, just got home from the late shift. Clear skies!

The Moon is almost full and is about 30 degrees above the horizon in the south. Judging by a few low altitude stars, the seeing seems quite decent and (with the beautiful observing session of Saturday evening still in mind) I roll the large Dobson into the backyard. The first look through the eyepiece is a bit disappointing: the seeing is unfortunately not as good as I hoped. After an hour of cooling with the built-in fans, things improve considerably, but unfortunately it won't be as great as Saturday. During moments of steady atmosphere, the maximum useful magnification is around 300x – I decide that's good enough for a moon sketch!

Vallis Schröteri in particular looks stunning, and just screams: “sketch me, sketch me, sketch me!”, but I still opt for the more modest crater duo Hansteen (45km) and Billy (46km). Almost equal in size, but very different in appearance. Hansteen appears to have a somewhat deeper bottom and a central "peak" is visible, as well as some terraces and lighter details on the bottom. On the southwest side, a narrow Rima follows an unusual route towards a duo of smaller craters, including Hansteen B. The northern crater rim is less pronounced and subtly merges into a kind of plateau.

Billy is completely different: completely filled with lava, creating a dark flat cast floor. Even in the moments of the best seeing, virtually no detail is visible on that floor. The crater rim is narrow, steep and sharp.

The mountain area of Mons Hansteen is very special. It has the shape of a narrow fan, or a wide footprint. The mountains are bright white and are isolated in a somewhat darker flat area. It strongly reminds me of Uluru in Australia. Lots of detail visible: ridges and small cracks.

 

The sketch is made on black paper with a white pastel (for the background) and a white + black pastel pencil for the finer details. Visually there were many more and finer details visible, but after more than two hours of sketching I called it a night. What a wonderfully relaxing observing session this was!

[Roel]

Some names added:

[Mr Spock]

Lovely rendition 👍

[Ratlet]

Incredible sketch.  I'm really impressed by your shading.  Billy really does look completely flat, I don't think I could achieve that level of tonal equality in a month Sundays.  Sounds weird, but having just started sketching keeping control of shading, particularly maintaining it equally in an area is next to impossible for me!

Rally incredible shading throughout.  What materials did you use?

[Neil_104]

That really is an ultra-realistic sketch, very impressive! As per Ratlet, keen to know what you used, and was it done completely at the eyepiece?

[Roel]

Thanks, Ratlet an Neil!

The sketch is made on black paper with a white pastel (for the background) and a white + black pastel pencil for the finer details.
It's relatively easy to render a equally shaded area with pastels by rubbing the powdery pastel material with a fingertip, or with special "blending stumps".

The sketch is completely done at the eyepiece. The image is an unedited photograph of the actual sketch, no alterations afterwards (apart from the black frame and text).

[RobertI]

Wonderful drawing (the word “sketch” under-sells it!) 

[maw lod qan]

Incredible!

How do you manage going from the eyepiece to the sketch. Do you use a redlamp at the sketch to keep your eyes adapted?

What ever your technique, it works!

[Roel]

Thanks!

Fortunately the Moon is so bright, dark adaptation is irrelevant while sketching the moon, which is very convenient.

I use a normal white headlight. 

Edited May 11, 2023 by Roel

[Naughty Neal]

Wow was my first reaction and after perusing for a while my second reaction was WOW.

Superb work .

Edited May 11, 2023 by Naughty Neal

[josefk]

I absolutely love that - excellent!

[mikeDnight]

Lovely sketch Roel! 

[bish]

Fantastic sketch 

[N3ptune]

Sweet scene on the moon there and I liked the the observations also, all interesting and a big motivation booster. It must be a unique experience to look at the moon with a 635mm mirror and 300x, the amount of very small stuff you must be able to resolve with such a mirror, I can only imagine.

Cool sketch, quick satisfaction. 👍

Thanks for sharing