M106, M51, Abell1656 (Coma Cluster)

Thanks, everyone!

Michael --

Yes, black pencil on white paper. After scanning, draw a lasso selection around the galaxies, nebulae, comets, other fuzzy items in the picuture. (If you hold down the shift key it will add to the selection instead of replacing it.) Then do an Inverse Selection. You've now got everything but the faint fuzzies selected. (It also helps if you feather the selection either before or after doing the inverse.)

Go to the Adjust Levels dialog, and you should see a spike at one end of the graph. That's the scanner noise. (The bump in the middle of the graph is your actual image data.) Drag the little triangle under the spike over a bit and see how much it cleans it up. You may have to play around with it a bit....

I usually do all that when it's still black objects on white background because the gunk is easier to see.

You can also usually adjust the levels from the scanner, but I've had less luck on that end and each scanner's software will be different.

Frank --

Those were all done in the dome. My solar sketches are done from outside, while most of my binocular sketches are done from a warm chair near a window.

-- Jeff.

Inspirational. It would make you go out there and start observing again.
Donal

Thanks, Donal!

I did up an annotated version of the Coma Cluster sketch. I added blue halos around the galaxies I had misidentified as stars so that you can tell what the labels refer to.

Cheers,
-- Jeff.