Astro sketches

A sample of my sketches made over the years. Click here for a "Practice session"

Click on any image for a high resolution version

Crater on crater on crater. Had very nice illumination so they really stood out.

 The wedge shaped shadow caught my eye. Drew it all up then went in and looked it up on a chart. My reaction is documented on the sketch...

Here's a video of a "flyover" of the Straight Wall (Rupes Recta). Created from images captured by the  Kayuga spacecraft from Japan.

An amazing sight one night. A small area appeared to change as I watched it! The best description was a slow "sparkling" appearance. I made a quick drawing and did some research. Turns out the area is known as the Descartes Highlands, the landing area of Apollo 16. What makes it unique is that it is composed of a number of rolling hills. The "sparkling" was caused by the constantly changing lighting angles and consequent reflections as the sun rose over this area.

Click on this link for PDF Finder & data document. Documents can also be found at the bottom of this page.

One of many very interesting sunspot complexes from the last solar maximum. This was very large and angular sizes were calculated.

An example of a large sunspot and its local region.

Full disk drawing of face of the sun during the last solar maximum

Plotting movement of a comet

Mars at its closest in a couple of thousand years - The year it was supposed to be "bigger than the moon".