Sketch, Sketch, Sketch...

After the TAAS meeting last night at our usual get together at Il Vicino we were talking about one of the astronomy clubs in Texas that Becky and Shane belong to, this group of astronomers has started to recreate the Messier Poster showing all 110 objects using their members own photos of the list. Becky and I decided to do this same thing for TAAS but using sketches rather than photographs. We are asking anyone interested to take out your sketch book, pad of paper, napkin or whatever is handy and easy to use and the next time you are looking at M1 or M101 to draw what you see in the eyepiece, jot down what size scope, eyepiece and location and let’s begin to compile a bunch of drawings and begin to put this thing together. I am going to do through my sketch books and gather my Messier Sketches as is Becky then we are going to begin to sketch some more so lend us a hand and lets have some fun…

So what happened to the Stars?

It is amazing that the clouds can sense what we most want and then do what they need to do thwart our hopes and desires. I really like to look at the Moon when it is in the crescent phase it is now and I was so looking forward to UNM Campus last night and to the Planetarium this evening to do some looking at the Moon and maybe some sketching and photographing of it, but these "darn" clouds are getting in the way, it is still fairly early on Saturday so I am not giving up hope for a clear sky this evening but it may only be a hope (now that I have put it down in writing maybe it will clear things up). Tonight will primarily be focusing on Mars but I may take a few moments and sneak a peek at the moon in there sometime. So let’s all keep our fingers crossed and maybe we will have a nice evening of observing.

Photo of the Moon I took in February, 2009.

Construction, Construction, Construction...and it continues...

Are you tired of the constructin photos?  Well they will be coming for a little longer but hopefully I will have some other things to post along with the construction stuff.  I am having a lot of fun with this photo-stitching software and as soon as I have enough I think I am going to upgrade from the free version to the full version but I will keep playing with this for now.  The immage above is made up of 22 seperate pictures and there is another earlier post that shows more of a curve on the beams and such I am playing with another setting in the program that straightens the image a little more making it not so distorted.

But things are going well on the construction site (for the most part) and the building is coming along, the spaces are really starting to take shape now.