The Sun on 11/06/24

[SwiMatt]

My current starvation of darkness continues, I haven't been out for almost a month - with lots of things going on between bad weather, work, new puppy, a trip to Finland and one to Wales...

I finally managed to catch 30 minutes of rest and pointed the telescope towards the Sun, which compared to a month ago is looking quite unimpressive. The sketch was dome at 60x and took me only 20 minutes - including the darkening of the limb. I'm hoping to catch some Moon views before midsummer, I'm aching for some pastel action after my last sketch!

 

[YogSothoth]

Nice sketch. I must have a go at that limb darkening on my solar sketches

[SwiMatt]

5 hours ago, YogSothoth said:

Nice sketch. I must have a go at that limb darkening on my solar sketches

Looking forward to seeing it! It gives the Sun a nice spherical appearance.

[Roy Challen]

1 hour ago, SwiMatt said:

Looking forward to seeing it! It gives the Sun a nice spherical appearance.

I need to do this too, what do you use to achieve that?

[SwiMatt]

2 hours ago, Roy Challen said:

I need to do this too, what do you use to achieve that?

I use a blending stump, I mix two ways of usage: to lay down some shade, I take a dirty stump and leave very light marks on the paper, then blend them out vigorously with a clean stump; the second way is to take a clean stump and pass it on the disk marked before with the pencil, rubbing out slightly the inner part of the disk. This also allows the disk not to be so marked (if you're not drawing on a black background). The marks are always left on the disk limits, then rubbed out following the curvature of the sphere towards the middle.

Edited June 12 by SwiMatt

[josefk]

I've just got back from the mid-north of Finland @SwiMatt - you have my empathy for the dark starvation!