In April, later a night, a bright star comes crawling above the horizon
in the East, dragging behind it a constellation, well-known to even the
youngest of astronomers, and all at once you know that Summer is
approaching again. Wega and with it the Constellation of Lyra is rising
again, bringing with it one of the most famous objects of the summer sky,
if not one of the most famous objects of the sky altogehter: M 57,
the Ring Nebula.
This was my second attempt at sketching it, this time I used an
OIII-filter and there is no way of telling what a difference it made.
The nebula, which had before just appeared as an even ring with a
somewhat milky center, suddenly started to reveal many details, darker
and lighter areas, an elongated halo – all of which convinced me that
apart from a good sky and obersving experience an OIII-filter is one of
the most powerful tools at the hands of an observer of planetary nebulae.
The drawing, which was done with white pastels on black cardboard again,
turned out pretty well.
Sebastian Lehner
A nice sketch,..but if you want my opinion, a little bit of color,green-bluish,would make it even better.??!!!
Peter.
Thanks a lot, Peter!
You are absolutely right with the colour, however my current approach on sketching is as little “digital sorcery” as possible, so it’s basically just scanning and adjusting brightness and contrast a little bit.
I used to work with photoshopped approaches in the past, however, maybe I’ll give it a try again soon.
Sebastian,
I love this sketch. My daughter and I took a long hard look at this planetary nebula during a perfect night of seeing at Kitt Peak National Observatory last spring. We both glimsed the central white dwarf star but could not detect a hint of color in the ring using a 20 inch RC scope.Excellent work.
Frank