Small Scope Observing/Thoughts

Back when Alan French asked for views at different apertures I started
thinking about selecting a short list of objects along with a list of
apertures for use in creating such a set of sketches. Buried
somewhere I have a set of (rough) Saturn sketches that were made with
a variety of apertures; but I have no equivalent set for DSOs.

Tonight I went out with Little-Red-Riding-Scope stopped down to a
2-inch aperture. After viewing a variety of DSOs at 11x I decided to
scrap the project -- at least from a deep-sky point of view.

I viewed M45, M31-32-110, M81-82, M57, M27, Albireo, M33, the Perseus
Double Cluster, NGC 752, M36, M37, M38 and M1. I took no charts out
with me, so I had to stick with objects I could find without charts.
The last object (M1) was no more than 20 degrees above my horizon at
the time of observation.

In this age of widespread air pollution, light pollution, and light
trespass I'm fortunate to have a pretty good backyard sky. Tonight's
observations were made within 50 feet of my back door. The walls of
my open-air observatory (the "Colosseum") blocked light trespass from
my nearest neighbors.

M31, the double cluster, M45, and M33 showed up quite nicely. The
rest of the list would have benefitted from additional magnification,
particularly M57 and M32.

The recent thread on the Crab Nebula combined with tonight's
observations got me thinking: What point is there to sketching
deepsky objects at 2-inch, 3-inch, 4.5-inch, etc. apertures when sky
conditions can make one person's 2-inch views superior to another
person's 8-inch views? Seriously, I think it would be a disservice
particularly to newbies who have no idea how good (or more likely, how
bad) their skies really are. Let's face reality. Most people,
amateur astronomers included, live in cities. My views from rural
Montana are obsolete, outdated, unrealistic. They no longer reflect
what most others might expect to see.

So I gave up.

Amateur astronomy has changed. Books and magazines concentrate more
on urban astronomy and less on dark sky astronomy. My sky and I are
headed for the same fate as the dinosaurs. It's time for a new
generation of amateurs to define the hobby in their terms. The old
ways are obsolete.

Sketcher
To sketch is to see.