Sigma Cassiopeia

[jdg600]

A quick sketch of Sigma Cass from yesterday evening.

[mariosi]

Great work jdg600.

Clear skies

Marios

[todd8137]

Doubles are great to view but drawing them never really as appealed to me what ever pair they are it's just two dots unless your judging the separation ?

Pat

[Pete Presland]

very nice sketch and report

[chiltonstar]

Doubles are great to view but drawing them never really as appealed to me what ever pair they are it's just two dots unless your judging the separation ?

Pat

I can see where you're coming from Pat.

Personally, I find it very difficult to give an realistic representation of a double, because of the problem of accurately showing the different brightnesses (5.0 and 7.2 in this case) and colours, showing clearly the separation against eg a scale, and drawing in the diffraction rings which I personally find difficult but an essential part of the beauty of double stars.

Maybe I (and others) need to go on a "doubles sketching course" somewhere nice and exotic with dark skies, copious Jaffa Cakes and a decent rouge.

Chris

[jdg600]

I understand what you're saying Pat and Chris. The sketches aren't really accurate representations of the view through the eyepiece but I just like to do them to keep some record of what I've seen and to record my overall impressions of the relative brightness, separation and angle.

[Qualia]

drawing (doubles) never really has appealed to me, what ever pair they are it's just two dots unless your judging the separation.

Pat

It's a valid point but in defence of the humble double, apart from their aesthetic quality, they offer excellent training grounds for honing observation and sketching skills.

Maybe one night we want a challenge of resolving a close pair, another night we're searching for a show piece of the night sky. When we have our double in the eyepiece, I feel the main features to record are position angle, separation, colour, and for me, the double's context to surrounding stars within the given field of view. If these can be carried off the sketch is as fine as any other astro-sketch.

The other great thing about double sketching is that they require significantly less work than say a cluster, but essentially employ the same skills. So in a very real sense they become excellent training grounds for more complex sketches one may wish to conduct in the future.