Bill's Sky

 I haven't been able to get out and observe since my last "learning experience a couple of weeks ago, but I did some reading and playing around with sketches. There are many people who do their sketches using chalk or white pencil on black paper, and do a fantastic job. They turn out professional looking images that are mind boggling. Just take a look at some of the Sketch of the Month winners on Cloudy Nights and those just posted in the Cloudy Nights Sketching Forum or the Stargazers Lounge Sketching Forum .  You will also find people doing as I do, using pencil on white paper at the eyepiece. One thing I found out is that many sketchers will take a picture of their pencil sketch, then use a program such as Windows Paint to simply invert the colors. This gives the black background with the object or stars in white. My sketches are a long way from being in the same ballpark even, but I applied this step to the ones I have done, and here are the results.They come out looking...

      This was my first chance to get out and observe since October 19. Before going out, I used TLAO and Stellarium to make a tentative observing list. Proposed targets were M30, which is a globular cluster; M52, an open cluster; M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. There were a few clouds widely scattered, but mostly clear sky. Transparency wasn't great, but most of the sky was workable.  Jupiter was clearly visible when I started setting up, just after sunset. By the time I was all set up Capella and a few other stars were visible. I did an All Sky Align using Capella, Saturn, and Jupiter. This is the first time I have tried mixing planets with a star for alignment and it seemed to work well. I slewed to M30 using the goto function. It was easily in my FOV, but was very faint. I slewed back to Capella, set a cover over most of the scope and a plastic cover over the table with my eyepiece case to protect from dew, and went in for dinner. I left the scope tracking Capel...