Virgo Cluster panorama
This sketch was made from McDonald Observatory’s parking lot near Fort
Davis, Texas, during a trip down south. I used a 14.5″ Dobsonian and 26mm
Plossl eyepiece, and graphite on paper (reversed in Photoshop for effect). I
had prepared circles for sketching, but we ran into a streak of 6 clear
nights and I ran out, and had left my circle template back in Winnipeg. I
decided to just start sketching without the boundary of an eyepiece filed
and see what happened. I really like the wide-field effect of not using an
eyepiece FOV circle – especially for clusters that need to be seen in
context.
Scott Young
Hi Scott,
Your sketch is excellent and has a real atmosphere about it. I particularly enjoyed it because I spent a couple of hours a few nights ago working my way along Markarian’s chain and managed to see most of these galaxies. I even considered having a go at a similar sketch so when I saw what you’d done there was almost a sense of deja vu! Nice work.
Andrew