Year: 
2013

Gerry Smerchanski ©   Here is my sketch of the Crater Gassendi. Gassendi is found on the 'north shores' of Mare Humorum and is a very complex structure. South rim seems inundated by the Mare while the crater itself exhibits rilles, central peaks, craterlets wall breaches and it is found between Mare and highlands. Sketch was done on Sept 15th 2013 from 21:00 to 23:00 CDT from Teulon, Manitoba Canada.Viewed through an old Celestron Ultima 8 with binoviewer at ~150x to 300x (exact power hard to determine as barlows are separated from eyepieces) Seeing was quite good (Antoniadi 2)

Sketch done using graphite pencils, ink and "whiteout" on smooth white paper. "Whiteout" is used not only to get those brilliant peaks and white patches, but to create roughness so as to simulate rougher terrain which is then sketched over with pencils. I rather like the effect (seen in my sketch up to the left of the main crater) as it is quick and effective when using smooth paper, but it is done to simulate rough terrain rather than actually plot exact features. I think of this as being similar to just making a lot of dots to simulate a globular rather than plotting each star. These lunar scenes contain far more data than I can plot so some compromises are taken. :-\ The sketch was photographed and flipped to proper view with North up and West to the right. The usual contrast and brightness were applied to compensate for the imaging process and to make it appear more like the visual experience.

This sketch was done some 37 years after my first sketch of Gassendi. It's an old friend that still holds much interest.

Gassendi 20130915