Praesepe (M44)

[SwiMatt]

After Joe's inspiring sketch, I wanted to give a go to M44 myself.

The Beehive (or Praesepe according to Romans) was my first "real" deep sky object after the easy Pleiades. I remember like it was yesterday when I tracked it down with binoculars, one week into the hobby. A year later, tonight, there it was showing its beauty in my Mak (at an excessive 60x - but I don't have longer eyepieces) and I picked up my trusted HB pencil to draw it. Lots of fainter stars needed averted vision to pop in my field of view - the Moon is behind my building but its effects could be felt. 

Here's the inverted image. I find that I prefer sketching open clusters in pencil, while I will keep white-on-black techniques for more nebulous objects.

[josefk]

Nice. I recognise those stars 🙂. The beauty of this game is it does feel like these wonderful things are committed to memory better. 

[SwiMatt]

Absolutely right @josefk!

I like coming on this side of the forum and getting inspired by what other people are doing. For me, it makes it feel like more of a community, if that makes sense - we exchange views and reports in a way that wouldn't be fully possible without sketching. Although the M44 you posted yesterday was from another universe (in terms of quality at least) 

[YogSothoth]

Great sketch. It’s a difficult cluster to sketch, as I know from when I tried it recently.