Welcome to sketching the celestial objects as seen through a Binocular. I took a shot at Ptolemy cluster and decided to record as I saw it. Pretty much it takes nothing to do it other than a piece of paper and a pencil.
Step 1: Draw a circle of decent radius. I preferred a 8cm radius because of the 80mm binos lens I have. I marked the circle at 12 points like a clock using a compass.
Do this before your observation session starts. This circle represents the field of view(FOV)
Step 2: Using a red light source when sketching in the dark helps. White light can affect your night vision.
Step 3: For a cluster like the one above, start with the stars closest to the edge of your view. From there get to the centre. (For other objects like nebulae and galaxies shading needs to be done which is reserved for another post)
Note: stars are not and dont have to be drawn to scale.
Step 4: Make a darker impression on your sketch for stars that are brightest and so on.
This is Sagittarius star cloud sketch. I couldn’t find the Ptolemy sketch in my files. Take it as a representation. My circle in the above sketch is a mess and its not a problem because all that will be edited away in the processing.
Step 5: once done with the sketch, upload your sketch to an editing software. I use GIMP. Use anything of your choice.
Step 6: There are several tutorials on processing you will find on YouTube on how to process to binocular sketch. Anyone will do.
While sketching is more taxing and tedious compared to photography, it is perfect for those into visual astronomy. Sketching makes you look at individual stars however dim and with experience giving you expertise on observing variable stars which is an actual contribution you can make to the http://www.aavso.org/vsx
The merits are endless once you’re accustomed to the effort the job asks of you.
heyy Pooja…
sorry for the extremely late reply but since you mentioned the ptolemy cluster which is one of the few clusters that look cool on my astromaster 70az, i decided to try sketching… here are the sketch and the pic i took by simply holding my phones camera against the eyepiece
Well done @varshini . The only aspect I’d request you to add in your future sketches is the cardinal points. Once you add them, it would be easy for anyone looking at your sketch to compare them with star maps.
thank you @Gnana but i have a doubt regarding cardinal points,
doesn’t any dso rotate from our point of view with time? does this mean that when adding cardinal points, the time of the observation is important too?
i’m asking this question from the observation i made when fixing on a dso on stellarium and then moving in time… it did seem to rotate
please feel free to correct me if i’m mistaken here and excuse me if this question makes no sense
Yes, unfortunately I assumed that you had the notes separately. If you hadn’t kept notes, then I’d say you need to start with that. Notes are more important and without that, the sketch will dwindle into just another doodle.
Generally, you’d have to record the date, time and location of the observation along with any aids that you are using such as binos or other telescopes, the magnification and any filters etc that are used for the observation apart from the conditions i.e., how turbulent the atmosphere is, how transparent the sky is. Then you describe what you see in words (atleast a few sentences is recommended).
Now for field rotation, you can’t avoid this unless you use an equatorial mount. Therefore, you need to adjust it in your sketch. Once you have marked west, you should then be able to extrapolate the various objects that you see through the equipment without the field rotation on the sketch using west marker and the initial two objects that you marked by triangulating the position of other objects in relation to these.
Hope I was able to clarify your doubts. If not let me know. If need be, I’ll send you the template that I use.
Hello @varshini , I just realised that the transparency scale that I use will not be useful in your latitude as you won’t see Ursa minor all year round. However, the idea is to use some of the stars with magnitude between 4 & 5 to set yourself a scale. You can define whether you want to define a scale of 1 to 5 or to 10 etc. Whichever that you decide on using, you just need to mention that in your log, that’s all.
thanks a lot for replying and helping @Gnana ,
also for the template- I didn’t think of finding one to overcome the annoying part of having to record everything while I can still try to find other objects to view n enjoy.
i did understand what you said but ill go through a few more times and try to implement
again , thank you so much!
