My first time (so be gentle with me)

[Demonperformer]

For my first astronomical sketch, I selected an open cluster in Lyra; Steph-1. I first stumbled across this cluster (yes, you can still ‘stumble across’ things, even if you have a GOTO scope;)) last summer and its ‘double arrowhead’ shape appealed to me. It is now back in the morning sky in the east, which is my darkest direction. The field of view is a nominal 28 minutes. I checked my result with CdC and it is reasonably accurate, although there are some stars that are fainter than others which were not seen/drawn (guess that’s just my observing technique), but I think it is complete down to about 12m3.

When I scanned it onto the computer, all the stars were ‘blotchy’ (this may be due to my materials – ordinary piece of white paper and an HB pencil only) so I went through the image making all the pixels that we greyish white, but this produced rather a ‘jagged’ result, which I then had to seriously reduce in size to get it look anything like reasonable. In fact, I probably spent more time getting the scanned image suitable for posting than doing the original sketch. As such, I am not sure that ‘sketch’ is an appropriate term any more, but it certainly qualifies as ‘unconventional’.

Well, FWIW here is the final result …

[Dave Smith]

From someone who has rarely sketched I think this is an excellent piece of work. I have applied a gaussian blur followed by unsharp mask in PS which I think gives it a more natural look?

Dave

[Demonperformer]

Thanks, Dave. I agree that it gives a better result.

Don't have photoshop, but both Gaussian blur and unsharp mask are available in PaintshopPro. The first requires me to set a 'radius', the second requires 'radius', 'strength' and 'clipping' values. If this is the same in PS, can you advise the values you used (just to give be a base line from which to play)?

Thanks.

[Dave Smith]

It was 1 pixel in gaussian blur and with unsharp mask I just pulled the slider until it looked right - sorry cannot remember the values.

Dave

[Demonperformer]

No probs, Dave. You have given me a starting point and I can have a play from there with my next attempt.

[DarkerSky]

Nice one DP. That's an object I've not looked at before. I'll put that on my list for this coming spring. I won't get to Lyra before April given my horizons!

With star clusters I tend to always tidy them up from my field sketch with some software. I'm fairly low tech and just use MS Paint to 'round off' some of the stars that are splodgy, and to get a bit of colour in to stars that showed some colour at the eyepiece.

If you're going to get into sketching I'd def recommend a set of graphite pencils. I have a selection of 12 from 4H to 6B from a well-known high street retailer. Cost less than a tenner. I use H-type pencils to mark down fainter stars and B-types for brighter stars.

It's just a matter of experimenting really

[Talitha]

Excellent sketch DP... very accurate!!! The plain white paper and HB pencil shouldn't cause any problems. Does your scanner have an 'auto-adjust' button? Mine does, and it adjusts the contrast, shadow and mid-tones.