Character Sketch

My first memory of the night sky was of my father pointing upward at one of the first artificial earth satellites. I remember looking. I also remember failing to see that historic satellite. Later I found myself reading everything I could find pertaining to astronomy and space exploration. Many of the images encountered in those readings found a place in my early sketch tablets.

I received my first "real" telescope in December of 1967 or 1968. It was a small aperture, 60 or 65mm, long-focus refractor. The thick-walled tube was made of cardboard. The objective was a single-element, uncoated, piece of plastic. A rubber-celled barlow lens could be inserted various distances inside the focusing tube to achieve any magnification between 60x and 150x. My earliest telescopic observations and sketches were made using this telescope on a shaky alt-az mounting.

After high school, a bit of college, and some military service I purchased a 20cm Schmidt Cassegrain telescope. I put that SCT to work for astrophotography as well as visual astronomy. In 1979 I used it to observe and photograph my first total solar eclipse. With me for that eclipse was the young lady I would end up marrying. A few years later, the day after a total lunar eclipse, our son was born.

In due time I set aside astrophotography and took up comet hunting. Comet hunting kept me reasonably happy until I read an article about automated search programs for near-earth asteroids. After that, the old-fashioned method of comet hunting seemed a waste of time. I decided to spend a larger part of my eyepiece time making sketches.

Solar Sketches-----------------------------------Lunar Sketches
Planetary Sketches-------------------------------Planetary Sketches - page 2
Jupiter-SL9 Sketches----------------------------Comet Sketches
Comet Hyakutake Sketches----------------------Comet Hale-Bopp Sketches
Deep Sky Sketches------------------------------Deep Sky Sketches - page 2
Rough Sketches----------------------------------Paintings

Why make sketches?-----------------------------The Art of Astronomical Sketching
Character Sketch---------------------------------Links to Other Websites
Home-made Binocular Mount-----------------Home