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Old 21-07-2013, 12:25 AM
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mental4astro (Alexander)
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mental4astro is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: sydney, australia
Posts: 4,979
A butterfly, a pine tree and yea olde cross

At last I've been able to put pencil to paper again. Weather and work couldn't conspire this time!

While scanning the terminator for interesting features, I'm always on the look out for interesting "apparitions". These could be alphanumeric symbols, or anything that the mind recognises as a familiar shape or thing. This time, a lovely collection of rimae and craters worked to form a butterfly! As the sketch developed, I found two other items that curiously form a pine tree in silhouette and an old cross with rounded ends.

I also found the crater Vieta to be an interesting item. A striking feature of Vieta is the bottom most section of the crater floor has a very much longer shadow of the rim wall cast across it than the top section. Two things could be at play here: either the rim wall is taller than the surrounding rim (unlikely), or the crater floor has collapsed in this area allowing for the shadow to appear to extend further out (more likely). A tell-tale sign is the small fissure that sits just above the extended shadow that reaches out to the central peak.

While conditions tonight could have been better, and it was a very cold night, it was a dry evening that saw no dew form at all!!! Wonderful stuff as the previous week had seen the mornings sodden with dew.

I've included a labelled picture of tonight's sketch to show the location of the various items.

Object: A butterfly, a pine tree and an olde cross
Scope: orange tube C8, 8" SCT
Gear: 8mm Celestron Ultima LX, 250X
Date: 20th July, 2013
Location: Sydney, Oz
Media: White, grey and black soft pastel & white ink on A5 size black paper
Time: approx. 2hrs
Attached Thumbnails
Click for full-size image (Butterfly, aka Vieta (1).jpg)
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Click for full-size image (Butterfly, aka Vieta , Labeled.JPG)
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