Sketches: Arp peculiar and Leo Triplet member

The clouds were coming and going last night, but when it was clear conditions were quite good -- transparency improving from NELM 5.5 to 6 as the evening progressed, and excellent seeing at Pickering 8. Pity then that I spent half my time with sketch book in lap waiting for the clouds to move.

Anyway, first up was an interesting interacting pair in Leo Minor that's on both my H400 list and my Arp Peculiar list:

Arp270 (NGC3395 and 3396) 3/26/2008, 21:45UT, Pickering 8, NELM 5.5, SQM 20.5

At 260x pair of galaxies have similar peak brightness, but SW component about 1/2-again as large with a correspondingly large boost in overall brightness. E member more condensed (and streaky), but neither has a well-condensed core. Halo of SW member flared to SW appearing almost comet-like. Flare more pronounced at 375x.

After a brief interlude of clouds, I turned my attention to the NGC member of the Leo Triplet, which led to a very interesting result. If you had asked me beforehand, I would have said that I can only see about 1/4 of what the DSS images show. So I was quite surprised when I looked at my sketch this morning under white light, and dang if I didn't capture more like 3/4 of the DSS information!

NGC3628 (3rd member of Leo Triplet) 3/26/2008, 23:00UT, Pickering 8, NELM 6, SQM 20.7

Best composite at 175x, although slant of dark lane and diffuse ends most prominent at 110x. Core highly elongated above dark lane, with only a small spot below it. Halo also elongated, with odd flaring at both ends.

With seeing this good, I couldn't pass up a quick look at Saturn. Conditions were fairly supportive of 560x (crisp maybe 10% of the time), but I also had a go for a bit at 670x (which delivered only one crisp moment, about 1/2 second in duration, in a total of 20 minutes). But wow, what image scale! The shading on the disk was sublime, and I managed to catch Enceladus emerging from the disk with less than an arc-second's separation (that's about 1/3 the width from the disk to the inside of the C-ring)!

It would have been a great night had the end-game not consisted of 30 minutes of vacuuming dead and slow-moving flies out of the dome ring and off the floor. Sigh.

Cheers,
-- Jeff.

Lovely well controlled sketches, there.

Deirdre Kelleghan
www.deirdrekelleghan.com/
Oscail do Shuile D'iontas na Cruinne
Open Your Eyes to the Wonder of the Universe

Wow, nice work Jeff. Kind of a nice way to keep up the hobby, don't you think?

Great sketching as always.
Something we should encourage more of.

Thanks, Deirdre, Seanie and Michael!

I do indeed find that sketching has re-invigorated my interest. I really must give Saturn a go, but I'm still finding the thought of trying to sketch the rings rather intimidating.

Cheers,
-- Jeff.

I'm still finding the thought of trying to sketch the rings rather intimidating.

Ah, what's the worst you could do? You just draw them as you see them. Reminds me of Stephen James O'Meara's WSP talk about first drawing the spokes on the rings, which were later confirmed to exist by venturing spacecraft and more advanced telescope.

Seanie.