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First couple of sketches (M3, M81)

Started by Plan9 , Apr 28 2009 08:30 PM
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7 replies to this topic

#1 Plan9

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Posted 28 April 2009 - 08:30 PM

Hi all,

I had made up my mind some time ago to start sketching as a way to keep a log. Last couple of nights were beautiful here (t-shirt weather at midnight), so I felt inclined to give it a shot.

I discovered:
- it's hard to get the field stars where you want them (won't vouch for the accuracy of any of this)
- it's hard to get the brightness of stars to correspond (but the scanner really exaggerated the contrast)
- I should practice making round dots :o

Cheers!

Bill

Attached Thumbnails

  • 3073790-M3Small.jpg

#2 Plan9

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Posted 28 April 2009 - 08:31 PM

And M81:

Attached Thumbnails

  • 3073795-M81Small.jpg

#3 Tommy5

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Posted 28 April 2009 - 09:59 PM

Very nice sketches, you must have reasonably dark skies , thanks for sharing..

#4 JayinUT

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Posted 29 April 2009 - 12:29 AM

Bill,

Nicely done sketches. One resource I have found helpful has been Jeremy's site Belt of Venus. It has some good links there to how to get some of these things down. One of the most helpful to me has been to divide the sketching circle into fourths and sketching what I see in that quarter portion I am working on before moving to another.
Well done and positions are pretty close, close enough I can't tell the difference.

#5 frank5817

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Posted 29 April 2009 - 12:57 AM

These are both very nice sketches and provide a great record of exactly what you saw at the eyepiece on the dates of your sketches. I find these kinds of records better than just written descriptions. :cool:

Frank :)

#6 TenthEnemy

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Posted 29 April 2009 - 02:32 AM

Very nice, don't worry too much about star placement, it doesn't really matter once you are away from the eyepiece. I certainly can't tell if there's any inaccuracies.

Round stars are easy, just place the pencil on the page and rotate it. Bright stars can either be larger or darker, but it doesn't look like you have a problem with this.

#7 Plan9

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Posted 29 April 2009 - 06:10 AM


Thanks all for the kind and helpful comments, everyone! Tommy, actually, the skies here aren't that dark (red zone), esp for the first sketch - I stared for a long time at each of these objects. A lot of those little stars seem to come out of the woodwork after a while. Some on this forum actually brighten up the background of their sketch to match the sky background; maybe that would also reduce the excessive contrast the scanner introduced. Frank, your comment is the reason I'm trying this - seems much better than just a text log.

Bill

#8 Jeff Young

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Posted 29 April 2009 - 03:07 PM

Bill --

Nicely done!

I also noticed that my observing skills improved considerably when I started sketching -- a bonus on top of the much more information-packed (and presentable) record.

Cheers,
-- Jeff.
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