by Marek Cichanski
I made an abortive attempt to draw M35, but the task of putting all those stars in the right places seemed too overwhelming. So I decided to go for some extended objects. Galaxies seemed like a nice place to start.
Here are the two drawings I made:
M65, M66, and NGC 3628 (I think):
http://home.earthlink.net/~marekc/m065m066.jpg
M104:
http://home.earthlink.net/~marekc/m104.jpg
There was one thing that was ironic, and that was the difficulty of drawing the 'spacewalk view' that one sees through the Nagler eyepieces. I've bent over backwards to acquire Naglers, because I absolutely adore the wide-field views that I get through them. I realize that this is going to sound snooty, but I really can't imagine doing visual observing through anything but a Nagler eyepiece. Everything else looks like the view through a toilet-paper roll - it looks chintzy and very non-deluxe. (That's TOTALLY IMO, though. I know that many people feel differently.)
Although the books all say to use a small circle on your piece of paper, I think that maybe I should try sketching on a much larger piece of paper, so that the various 'sizes' (i.e magnitudes) of stars don't seem so big compared to the field of view. And I think I'll size the resulting sketches to that one has to move the monitor's scroll bars in order to see the whole thing. I think that will be reminiscent of the Nagler field of view.
At any rate, sketching is fun. I enjoy using the pencils, kneaded rubber, and blending stomp on the pages of my sketchbook by the glow of my red flashlight. Another one of those 'little asthetic pleasures' that makes amateur astronomy fun for me. I may also try sketching on the computer, using CorelDraw. I have a feeling that might give me a lot more control.
Maybe even import field stars, etc...
Posted on sf-bay-tac Apr 23, 2004 14:49:26 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 10, 2004 18:50:45 PT
