Explanation:
The sight of
Mercury's tiny round disk drifting slowly
across the face of the Sun
inspired
and
entertained
many
denizens of planet Earth last week.
In fact, artist and astronomer Mark Seibold viewed both the
1999 and
2006 transits
of the solar system's innermost planet
through solar filtered
telescopes and composed
this
rendering of Mercury "hovering in the
photosphere" near the edge of an enormous solar disk.
The original work is a 23 by 17 inch pastel sketch.
While the
artist's hand
is creatively superimposed, Seibold
concentrated on offering an impression of Mercury's silhouette,
surrounded by shadings reflecting his visual experience that
are not easily captured in photographic exposures.
Of course, before the age of cameras
drawings were more
widely used to record telescopic observations
of sunspots
and planetary transits.
I apologize that I do not speak or write German although all my grand parents are from the old country.
I am Mark Seibold, the artist in Portland Oregon that submitted the Hand Drawn Transit of Mercury transitting the sun as observed throughmy h-alpha solar telescope on Nov 8th.
I wanted to thank your site for posting the photo of my pastel sketch.
Un das es sehr gut !
thank you for this marvellous picture. although we just take the pictures from the NASA astronomy picture of the day, i am glad we have such a nice picture on our site, and that you like it being here.
keep on the good work!
To answer your question, I found your site by doing a search on my name and "hand sketched pastel".
As you say that you enjoy the science of astronomy and space art, I have much more in my Myspace.com while not running a professional website right now. >
www.myspace.com/marksolarprophet
Also I wanted to post something here for you, as my other pastels were recently featured in Spaceweather.com > Oct 14th; Oct 31st; Nov 7 ~ 8th; Dec 14th. You can access the site and then enter the dates in the upper right archives.
