Some More Sketches

I’ve made quite a few sketches the last month or so.  The recent Mars Opposition made for some great views of the red planet, and  I made my first Mars sketch since 2012! I sketched it with the RV-6 on 5/3/14 at 277x. The seeing was excellent.

My next sketch is one of the bright globular cluster M3, or NGC 5272.  I sketched it with the Orion Observer 70 and the 16 Nagler.  It was nice to have such a wide apparent and true field and some decent magnification. As usual, clicking the photo will show the full resolution view.

Quick question for you, do you prefer seeing the close up “Presentation” view like the Mars sketch, or is the full scanned page better?  Moving right along, another sketch I did was spiral galaxy NGC 4753.  I highly recommend this galaxy.  It was pretty nice and bright, and punched through the light pollution pretty well.  Definitely worth a look.  Sketched with the 12.5″.

Here is my most recent sketch, one of Saturn I did just the other day. It is my best view of Saturn to date. I got this Saturn template from Jeremy Perez’s website, you can download it here.  Using the 7mm Galoc ortho and a 2x Shorty barlow I had the power racked out to 544x! The seeing was really steady and if I could put more power on it, it would have been able to handle it.  On this sketch, most notable is Encke’s Division, the furthermost gap in the rings.  The largest gap is called Cassini’s division.

 

3 Galaxies

Here are some sketches from my last outing with the 12.5″.  I observed the galaxies NGC 5055, 4594, and 4565.  Clicking the images will display the full resolution view.

NGC 5055, also known as M63, in Canis Vernatici

 

NGC 4594, known as M104 in Virgo

 

NGC 4565, in Coma Bernices

Hope that you like the sketches, and just a reminder that you can download this log sheet free (check out the header of the blog).

Sketch of the M82 Supernova

Here’s my sketch of the SN from the 19th of January with the RV-6.  I observed the SN in the same scope a few nights ago and it was noticeably brighter, as it was easily seen at a low power of only 39x with a GSO 32mm Plossl. Click on the image for a high resolution view.