Telescope Reviews: Re: Mars and the Beehive 23 May UT

Thanks, everyone. I appreciate the feedback. Matt, nice to hear from you--glad you're still kicking around. Anthony, nice sketch--Saturn was a bonus.

Hope you all get clear skies to watch this encounter. The forecast for clear skies here tonight turned out to be wrong--I'm going to try and add the 2nd position tomorrow night. By then, the Red Planet will be well outside of the main cluster of stars in the Beehive.

A couple of thoughts on my sketch. I got in a hurry to post here last night and compressed the file a little too small--I've rescanned and reposted the sketch in a little bigger file size. I hope you'll take a second look.

Even though I captured the central portion of the cluster (~1.5°), I'm disappointed with myself that I didn't draw the whole target within the scale of the FOV of my binoculars (~4.4°). And my template was 4 inches (100mm) in diameter--M44 is big! I'm doubly disappointed that I didn't think outside the box (or the circle in this case) and go ahead and put stars all over the page where necessary. If I get a clear night tomorrow, Mars will be way outside the circle. I know some peple don't think a circle is necessary or desirable, but I feel I need one for a frame of reference to begin the sketch.

Lastly, I started the sketch using my watercolor pencils (which I like but haven't used very much). Big mistake--too crumbly. I had to go back and go over all the stars with regular Prismacolor white pencil. Other than that, I liked using the white and color pencils on black paper, rather than using graphite and inverting digitally.

Thanks again for the comments.

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Michael Rosolina
8" f/10 Orange Tube SCT
4.25" f/4.2 Astroscan Reflector
SVP 3.6" f/13.6 CA Reflector
40mm PST f/10
APM Germany HD 15x70 binoculars
Canon 12x36 IS II binoculars
Mark I Eyeball
My CN Gallery

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