ASTRONOMICAL SKETCHING

My astronomical sketches are just that sketches and not drawings which are much more involved and take much longer. My sketches are intended to show my viewers as accurately as possible what I am looking at in my telescope and also create a documentation of what I saw for later use. They only take 15 minutes. In this video I'll tell you how I make my sketches so you can try to make your own for your log book.

[@Mukhtarahmad]

i admire your humility.... but you are in no way an amature astronomer! you are the most knowledgeable & professional stargazer i have ever had the privilege to be a follower of.......Respect!

[@tsulasbigadventures]

Aw! That is so kind of you to say. Thank you.

[@ericfrizzell2450]

Hi Tsula! I have been sketching sunspots scince 2010 and love it. Clear skys forever.

[@tsulasbigadventures]

Hi Eric. I tried to sketch some sunspots and they didn't look very good but I think I need to magnify them more and try again before this solar maximum ends.

[@GrenvilleMelonseedSkiff496]

Thanks for a wonderful video! I’m thinking of upgrading my current Tasco Galaxsee 60 mm f15 refractor (aka the dreaded department store hobby killer) but without going down the astro photography rabbit hole. At least my telescope has taught me about the function of an equatorial mount. I like visual astronomy and have done a little sketching so this seems like a perfect combination of art and science! PS: My experience with learning to draw is that it can help one to really see the world around us. I found that when I completed the exercises in Betty Edwards book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain many years ago, my new found observing skills helped me see the world around me in a whole new way. Clear skies! 🌝🪐✨🔭🇨🇦

[@waltergold3457]

You might like drawing microscopic images. I don't know if this can be done with a telescope, but with a microscope, you can keep one eye on the eyepiece and the other on a piece of paper, essentially tracing the image. So you don't need drawing skills, you see many remarkable things, and you're not limited by the weather or forced to leave the comfort of your desk.

[@tsulasbigadventures]

Yes, I agree that sketching opens up the world and the universe. And I agree on upgrading the department store Tasco!

[@ronm6585]

Thank you Tsula. 👍🏻

[@tsulasbigadventures]

Thank you!

[@jiecao6349]

I’m going to start sketching too! Thanks for all the tips.

[@tsulasbigadventures]

Great. Thank you.

[@waltergold3457]

The first rude sketch that the world had seen Was joy to Adam's mighty heart Till the devil whispered behind the tree: "It's pretty, but is it art?" (Kipling 🙂)

[@lornaz1975]

I am left handed too and my handwriting is the same as yours. I have recently attempted to sketch and notate my observations. Kinda easing into it so not doing too well with it but getting there. Also, that is quite a handsome scope and EQ mount behind you!

[@tsulasbigadventures]

Mine are still bad but I keep trying to improve. Thanks!

[@steveengleman9257]

Great advice! I'll give this a try.

[@tsulasbigadventures]

Thanks and I'm glad to hear that.

[@damonbrown5548]

Great video, I’m new to the hobby and keen to improve what I observe, so that I can work toward completing some of the AL observing programs. This video earned you a new sub, really appreciate the tips. Next up is your star chart vid.

[@tsulasbigadventures]

Thank you! Sketching is the best way to improve your observational skills and at least one of the AL programs requires sketches. I think it's one of the Observing the Moon Programs. I made a video about using those programs to help you with observing the moon. I have quite a few beginner videos. Thank you for watching and thank you for subscribing. Clear skies!

[@gregerianne3880]

Good grief, I never knew there was so much to astronomical sketching, Tsula! This was an eye-opener, for sure. 😊 Do you have ALL your report cards?!! 😂 Yeah, my handwriting is atrocious as well. Try teaching for 25 years having all the students squinting at the board: “What’s that say?” I thanked the Lord for PowerPoint, even with all its down sides!

[@tsulasbigadventures]

Hi Greg: That's funny. Yes, I have all my old report cards and the rest of them were mostly As! Yes, thank goodness for Word and Powerpoint. And I am so glad I took typing in 5th Grade.

[@pascalduquenne5947]

😎👍

[@tsulasbigadventures]

Thank you.

[@joeparham2889]

I enjoy your videos. I am wondering what is the purpose for sketching the night sky? Thanks

[@tsulasbigadventures]

Thank you. Sketching makes you a better observer because it forces you to observe fine details that you might not otherwise see. Also it's a record of what you saw that you will enjoy looking at years later if you keep all of them.

[@peacocksquirrel9665]

Thanks again for another wonderful video! How do you deal with the fact that sketches of the same object looks very different from depending on the telescope design? eg: my sketch of the Orion nebula is an inverted mirror image (viewed through a 12" dobsonian)

[@tsulasbigadventures]

Well, your sketch will be inverted when using a Dobsonian and a mirror image when using a refractor and a Catadioptric but that is perfectly fine.

[@waltergold3457]

I knew, even before watching it, that I'd like this one. 🙂 It's nice to think of cavemen - "some Leonardo [da Vinci] of the Reindeer Age," as H.G. Wells put it - sketching constellations. You may remember the PROMETHEUS scene, and the one in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY wherein a solitary ape-man, sitting apart from his bickering fellows, raises his eyes slowly to the stars. Every other beast regards the ground with downcast eye But man is given a stately look, replete with dignitie. He is willed to behold the heavens, with face on high, To mark and understand what lies amid the starry sky. (Ovid, METAMORPHOSES)

[@tsulasbigadventures]

Thank you! I was quite young but yes, I remember well the opening scene from A Space Odyssey. And that's a very nice quote.

[@waltergold3457]

@@tsulasbigadventures You'll hear that quote repeated, in its original Latin, at the very end of the first act of Eugene O'Neill's STRANGE INTERLUDE, my favorite play. O'Neill's instruction is that the actor (playing a professor of the classics) should utter the line in the "tone of a man whistling in the dark, to keep up his courage." Speaking of the dark, and of the classics, I don't think many people appreciate the point of Kubrick's movie - at least, I've never seen this discussed. It has nothing to do with the Arthur C. Clarke novel, which speaks rather tediously of aliens educating humans. In the movie, the monolith is exactly what it appears, an impenetrable door to the secrets of the universe. Plumbing them is a humanist fantasy, an orbiting embryo - we're incapable of godhead, of evolving beyond replacing bones with spaceships (with a zero-gravity commode and in-flight jujitsu videos) and an unreliable AI; and battles around waterholes, with battles around a (circular) coffee table, as an American scientist fends off questions from suspicious Russian colleagues. The scientists discussing the monolith: "It was buried here 4 million years ago, and not by earthquake or erosion. It was deliberately buried - why, we don't know. We don't even know what the damned thing is!" Clearly, these astronauts hadn't read their Xenophon, who has Socrates say: "The gods deliberately hid the secrets of the universe, knowing that if we ever uncovered them, we'd use that knowledge to destroy ourselves, thinking ourselves gods." And, of course, when the monolith finally activates, it sends a signal directly to Jupiter, the king of the gods! There was the door to which I found no key. There is the veil through which we may not see. (Omar Khayyam) PS: Ovid's best-known English translation is an Elizabethan one which, in the Shakespearean tradition, contains an egregious anachronism - an astronomical one, in fact: The blustering blasts of Boreas reign In Scythia and other lands set under Charles's Wain. See? 🤔🙂

[@tsulasbigadventures]

@@waltergold3457 I was so young when I saw 2001: A Space Odessey that I had no idea what it was about. I never read the Arthur C. Clark book but your interpretation of the movie sounds about right. Excuse my ignorance but is Charles's Wain referring to the Big Dipper is the part that is the egregious anachronism?

[@waltergold3457]

@@tsulasbigadventures Yes, exactly! To the Elizabethans, Charles was Charlemagne, who lived about eight centuries after Ovid. I say "to the Elizabethans" because - as I didn't know until just a few minutes ago, after a Wikipedia dive - their "Charles" was originally "churl," meaning "man." So the Big Dipper was the Man's Wagon, and the Little Dipper was the Woman's Wagon. And I was also struck to learn that calling the Dippers "bears" is an Indo-European cognate - apparently the ancient inhabitants of Mazandaran were familiar with the Asiatic bear. 🙂

[@tsulasbigadventures]

@@waltergold3457 Didn't the indigenous peoples of North America say that they looked like bears?