Sketch: M8 through a 80mm refractor

[Roel]

After literally weeks of rainfall and clouds, last night the sky finally cleared. I took my little 80mm f/6,25 refractor out to a fairly dark site to observe some low Milky Way objects. In the Netherlands Messier 8 rises only 14 degrees above the southern horizon, but because of the very transparant sky much more detail than I expected was visible. Using an Orion Ultrablock filter the dark lane was pretty prominent, and the bright patch on the western side of the nebula appeared to glow. It was a wonderful sight at 38x (13mm Vixen LVW), even at its low altitude.

The sketch was made with a black pen (for the stars) and a 2H graphite pencil (for the nebulosity) on a piece of white paper. Inverted and orientation-flip using Photoshop.

Object Name: Messier 8, Lagoon Nebula

Object Type: Emission nebula

Location: Wilp, The Netherlands

Date: July 21, 2012

Media: Black pen and graphite pencil on white paper

[Andrew*]

Superb sketch. Thanks for sharing. One I've yet to see...

[rory]

ive not seen this one either. great sketch though, almost photographic. strange all the sketching pointers ive read recomend soft pencils,i see youve used hard (2h) for nebula.

thanks for posting.

[Roel]

strange all the sketching pointers ive read recomend soft pencils,i see youve used hard (2h) for nebula

It might seem that very soft pencils would be ideal for nebulae, but for me it's very hard to make very subtle shades of grey with those. No matter how gentle you handle them, the result is always a bit to dark for those "misty" regions. Personally I favor a hard, but unsharp pencil. When it touches the paper lightly, it hardly leaves a trace, but pushing the pencil harder makes the result darker.

[rory]

thanks for the tip,Roel.

[Mike73]

Very nice sketch

[4lefts]

really beautiful. thanks for the tip about the hard pencils. i need to do some sketching again.

[DarkerSky]

Fantastic sketch Roel.

[nightskystargazer]

Roel,

Very good sketch of M-8 .

CS,KLU,

,

Tom