Comparative study of M42

Here are three sketches of the same target, showing what might be expected at differing apertures, magnifications and filtrations:

• 70mm, 18x, unfiltered
  
• 406mm, 175x, unfiltered
  
• 406mm, 510x, narrowband

Anyway, I thought some might find it interesting...

-- Jeff.

Hi Jeff,
These along with yesterdays sketches are great for those that still sketch.
Thanks

Hey Jeff they are really something :shock: that art work is fab thanks for posting.What type of sketching materials do you use for that kind of thing, and do you use different materials for different objects ie:nebula,planets.

Donal --

Now that I've finally got my sketches up on a web server and can post them here, I've got 3 or 4 more back-logged observation reports that I'll dribble out over the next couple of weeks.

Dogstar --

I'm still a novice sketcher, so my kit is pretty basic. All my sketches are done in a Daler-Rowney A5 spiral-bound sketchbook (50 sheets of 160gm "cartridge" paper, which is nice and heavy and stands up to lots of smudging, erasing, and some good old-fashioned Irish humidity).

I've got a soft pencil (HB, perhaps), and a harder one (3H, I think), but I only use the harder one for globular clusters (see M15, below). A couple of blending stumps, a normal rubber and a gum rubber round out the kit. (The gum rubber is great for rolling over part of a sketch to dim it a bit.)

I then scan the sketches into Photoshop, clean up any scanner artifacts, and invert them.

I've seen some fantastic planetary sketches done with pastels and colored pencils, but I haven't progressed that far yet. (I only started October past; my portfolio currently stands at about 35 sketches.)

Cheers,
-- Jeff.

Cool, that M15 is amazing.

great art work on those images. Classic Astronomy in these hi-tech days. like taking notes in school, i imagine that sketching an object teaches more than simply looking at it.

Question; Do you sketch and then produce image in negative (noticed spine if note pad also in negatative image?

declan