Brent’s Jupiter Sketches
Unless otherwise noted, all of my Moon and Jupiter sketches are displayed with South at the top and East to the left. Since they were drawn with a mirror star diagonal, the original sketches were reversed left for right. After scanning them, I mirror-imaged each drawing with photo-editing software. Click on any of these thumbnails to see a larger JPEG image (some are as large as a quarter-megabyte).
Sketches Drawn using an 8″ SCT
I made this observation of Jupiter on November 11, 2000 from around 8:20 to 9:00PM EST in not very good seeing. South is up and the preceding limb is to the left in this picture, so that large dark spot on the lower part of the drawing is a feature in the NEB and the Great Red Spot is in its hollow toward the top of the drawing.
The dotted line is supposed to represent a hazy blueish glow I observed off the preceding limb of the planet when using a #82A Pale Blue color filter. It was not there in the unfiltered view, so maybe it was some artifact of a smudged filter or similar. The dark spot preceding the GRS is drawn as it appeared with a #21 Orange color filter. Without the filter, the spot was much fainter than it is drawn and was actually lighter than the GRS itself.
Observing Notes
Observing Notes for Jupiter on November 11, 2000 (EST)
8″ f/10 SCT with 10mm Ploessl eyepiece (203x). Observed with #82A Pale Blue and #21 Orange filter, as well as the unfiltered view.
Sketch Notes
The original sketch at the eyepiece was done in a freehand ellipse a little less than 2″ in diameter. For the finished sketch, I tried to stick to something like the standard ALPO way of drawing Jupiter. I didn’t use an ellipse since I don’t have an elliptical template. The circle is 2.5″ in diameter and I colored in the black background with a pencil.
I don’t really care to use the ALPO pre-printed forms since I can’t get them into my bound sketchbook and it would be hard to get them on the kind of paper I find works best for shaded pencil sketches. After doing this drawing, I also don’t care for the pencilled-in black background. In the future, I think I’ll get an ellipse template about this same size and leave the background white. It won’t be standard but then again I’m not submitting my observations for anyone else to record.