Fra Mauro and suroundings

[Bizibilder]

Last night was clear and steady and I went out to observe with a plan! It finally paid off after an hour and a half of total concentration at the eyepiece, broken only by the need to change batteries in my drawing light!! For once I am reasonably happy with the result but it is going to take a lot more practice to get the subtlety of shading right.

The original was redrawn this morning to give the image attached here.

SW Evostar 120 x200. N at top E to the left.

[Doc]

What an amazing image Biz, 90 minutes is along time to be concentrating at the eyepiece, well done

[cplee42]

That's a very impressive sketch. I was out myself looking just above this at Copernicus and you've captured Fra Mauro really well.

[Talitha]

This is great... very accurate!

Yeah, 90 minutes to 2 hours sounds about right. Why did you re-draw the sketch in the morning, though? If the dew wrinkled the paper up, you might try sitting under a patio umbrella.. makes a world of difference.

(btw, East is left )

[Bizibilder]

Oops! sorry about the E/W - I still get confused using the diagonal!

I always re-draw the sketches that I make at the eyepiece. They tend to be quite large and end up with all sorts of sub-sketches and notes all over them! Its just the way I work. I then sit down at the desk and re-draw the whole thing combining all the information that I have on the original. (I always keep the original sketch!) I realise that this is creating second generation images but I find that doing it this way works for me. It also allows me to cheat a little as I tend to trace a very faint outline of the feature from a map, the idea being that this "removes" any cartographical errors!! I then use this to render the final image.

[Talitha]

It also allows me to cheat a little as I tend to trace a very faint outline of the feature from a map, the idea being that this "removes" any cartographical errors!! I then use this to render the final image.

No wonder you're so accurate.

[Bizibilder]

I can justify my cheating!! My aim, whilst learning my way around the Moon, is to draw as many features as I can in order to "fill in" a line drawing map that I have (about 25" diameter). After scanning the drawings I can make them the right size and digitally "stick" them on the map - one day I will have done the whole Moon!!!!