Some drawings from many many moons ago.

Well,
I suppose with the up coming drawing talk and workshop at the WSP this year, if I was ever go put these up for posterity, then its either now or never. I've tried to image sizes small for dial up users.

Some of you may remember a pretty cool conjunction back in June 1991, I had 7x50 binos which were perfect for observing it, it was great to see the planets moving appreciable form night to night, one thing that has struck me now is that you'd be extremely lucky to get as many good nights in a row as I had back then to get this.
This is one of the observing sheets from back then



and this is a "composite" of all the observations of the conjunction making a "time lapse" sequence, all old fashioned rulers and compasses back then, no such this a photoshop or registax to help.



At the time, I also hunted down some comets, namely Comet Levy 1990 and Austin.

Here is a single observation of comet Levy at the time in Sagittarius.


and here is a compilation of observations over 2 weeks.

The comet was actually brightening as time went on, but I didn't allow for atmospheric extinction as it decreased in altitude.

Here is one of comet Austin.


I also did some deep sky objects with what we used to call the LACT (Limerick Astronomy Club Telescope) which is a 12" F5 Newtonian and is still in use today.

Here is a quick drawing of the Orion nebula and Crab Nebula, made under light polluted condition, having said that the pollution is alot worse these days from the same location.
No filters were used or affordable at the time!


At the time I tried getting a negative image of it using photocopiers but the quality was terrible, isn't photoshop great : cheer: !


The dumbbell showed up nicely, here is a rough quick sketch along with the Eskimo nebula


Like the M42 drawing, I always wondered what a negative of it would have looked like.


While at it I got M81 and M82 in ursa major, at the time through that scope they were smudges, the light pollution did them no favours. The pleiades always looked great at low powers through that scope


Well, that's been a nice trip down memory lane for me, I used a clipboard and small red light and standard pencils for the drawing, I used to really like drawing and might get back into it someday, I reckon that it would be actually easier to do this then try and get deepsky images with the canon through the obsessionator.

The club at the time was only a few years old and we held meeting every 2 weeks back then (I dont know how they did it!). The LACT was a massive jump in aperture for me, I was using a 60mm refractor before that. Detecting M57 was a serious feet with it, note how I didn't say seeing, seeing anything faint through that little scope was tough going. Needless to say that 12 inches of aperture was amazing at the time and is still very respectable today. I couldn't get over the size of the mirror or how massive the 1.25 inch eyepieces looked compares to the cheapo tasco 0.96" plastic rubbish.

It goes to show how much modern telescope have come on over the past 18 years.

very nice to follow this story ! It has so much nostalgic things...

Dee and Sally like your work Dave
See ye in Birr later

Deirdre Kelleghan
PRO IFAS

Nice work, Dave!

I love the time-lapse drawing of the Venus/Mars/Jupiter conjunction.

Cheers,
-- Jeff.

Thanks all,
The drawing are really rough impressions more then they are technically accurate, but hey it was fun. See you in Birr.