A Milky Way full of Perseids

[Roel]

Almost every last week's night was cloudy, or even rainy... But on the evening of August 13 the sky cleared big time, and a wonderfully transparent atmosphere showed the Milky May, even while the moon was still up. The Andomeda Galaxy and the Double cluster were easy naked eye objects, and an occasional Perseid flew in front of it all.

When the Moon set, the Milky Way quikly turned brighter and I started sketching all Perseids I saw on a pre-drawn pastel sketch (white pastel on blue paper) with only the brightest stars of the eastern sky and a faint Milky Way. I drew the trees on site with a felt tip pen. The meteors were then added with a pastel pencil. Some of the brightest meteors showed a very distinctive green hue, and most left misty streaks behind for a few seconds. The green hue was added "on the feel", because the colour of the pencil was invisible in red light. Fortunately it turned out great!

Afterwards I added a lot of faint stars to complete the drawing. (of course the faint star are not accurately placed, but it makes the sky looking more like it really was: filled with countless points of light).

 

 

Close-up:

 

Larger 1500px versions can be found here: http://www.roelblog.nl/2016/08/perseiden-2016-super/

[Knighty2112]

Wonderful sketches. Well done. Beautiful!  

[Uplooker]

Absolutely fabulous, you are a very skilled artist. That sketch is brilliant, very atmospheric, you should be very, very proud of your achievement. It is almost photographic

I struggle to draw a straight line with a ruler.

Congratulations.

[laudropb]

Very nice sketches.

[orion25]

Wow! What magical sketches! You did a beautiful job, Roel 

[knobby]

Really nice, well done .

[happy-kat]

Wonderful sketch, very capturing.

[Richard Hather]

Well done roel, I've never seen this technique executed so well ☺️

Impressive detail and beautiful to look at ?

Richard 

[N3ptune]

It's like Mozart ? incredible

[BRADLEY 1953]

WOW,   a beautifully atmospheric  and well executed sketch from a skilled artist, now looking forward to the 2017 Perseids.     Chris.