AST.

1000 1B
Major Assignment: Sketch of a Moon and Detail.
Friday 18th November
The sketch I drew of the moon was captured on 8th November at 4 AM in the morning. I only
found out a couple of hours earlier that a lunar eclipse was going to happen later that morning
and then I remembered I had this project due and decided to capitalize on my opportunity. I
didn’t have access to a telescope but a close friend of mine, who is really into photography, had
a 50x lens that I used to view the moon and the lunar eclipse, and decided to capture it which I
later replicated in my sketch. The moon was captured on a Cannon Powershot SX540 HS with a
50x zoom lens and lucky for me, the sky was clear that morning and it was the last lunar eclipse
until 2025 as it is only about once every year and a half that the three bodies line up perfectly
to make an eclipse happen.
As I mentioned earlier, the sky was clear that morning. We went on the roof of my friend's
apartment building in Bedford, where the isn't a lot of light pollution. No clouds, no fog, and
since it was 4 in the morning everything was very quiet and peaceful with very little light shining
at the sky making it the perfect environment to view, capture and draw the moon. This was the
first time I viewed the moon in such detail because I never really paid much attention to it
before taking this course. And it was such a beautiful experience. I am not much of an artist and
never really enjoyed sketching growing up, but I decided to challenge myself this time. I will get
a lot of opportunities in the future to write essays but not many to sketch the moon and so I
said why not. I still don’t think that my sketch perfectly replicates the moon that morning, but I
can say that I did put in a lot of effort since it took me 3 to even draw a proper circle, that says a
lot.
In my sketch, I tried to replicate the reddish/orangish color of the moon caused by the eclipse
and its natural greyish color too. The reason for the orangish/reddish shade is because the
moon does not have any light of its own, it shines because its surface reflects sunlight. During a
total lunar eclipse, the Earth moves between the Sun and the Moon and cuts off the Moon's
light supply. When this happens, the surface of the Moon takes on a reddish glow instead of
going completely dark. The darker shade in my sketch represents the craters on the moon
created by the crashing of asteroids and meteors on its surface. And the dark and black shade
surrounding the moon would be space.
Overall, this was a unique and exciting experience which I never had before and, in my opinion,
the end result was really magnificent. I love trying out new things, stepping out of my comfort
zone, and this experience was one of a kind. I had the chance to spend some quality time with a
close friend, look at the moon and witness the lunar eclipse, which is not a common
occurrence, and then challenge my own skills and sketch the moon. I am glad that I chose
option 2 to sketch rather than write an essay which would've been really boring.