M33 drawing

[Howard B]

You may have noticed Ted Forte's excellent article about M33 in the December issue of Sky & Telescope, and perhaps that it includes my drawing of M33. Actually, it includes only the central portion of it so I present the full negative and positive drawings here. They're greatly compressed from their full scans so I'm not sure how they'll come across on the forum, but at least you'll see the full extant of the galaxy I was able to see. The drawing was done with my 28 inch f4 using magnifications from 105x to 1200x over about 8 hours of eyepiece time spread out over four years. I didn't plan for this to take so long but unfortunately the best time to see M33 is when the rainy season begins in Oregon, so I've really had to practice patience with this one!

Big M33 originalsketch_cleaned_smallest.jpg Big M33 originalsketch_cleaned_invert_smallest.jpg

I've also made individual sketches of the NGC, IC and star associations in M33, but I'll save those for a different post. By the way, I used the finder chart by Steve Gottlieb at http://tinyurl.com/m4mrmy2 to navigate my way through M33, which I found surprisingly easy to get turned around in at first. The low surface brightness of this wonderful galaxy can make it a confusing neighborhood in a big scope, but what a great place to get lost in.

[Ivan Maly]

Most outstanding.

A larger file would be nice. (I am guessing that the files you were actually uploading were larger than what we see.)

[deepskywim]

Waw, this is really an amazing drawing!

[Uwe Glahn]

Very realistic sketch Howard, really impressive. It reminds me very fast and good to the impression through the eyepiece of my 27". 8h of observing time, a lot of work but it was worth for. Now you know and remember very well the galaxy itself.

I had not the guts yet to draw M33 trough big aperture. But I remember very well the observation of M33 a few years ago with my small 4" Newton when I only wanted to take a quick and dirty look at M33 during my Local Group observing project. Conditions were nearly perfect and what I saw was incredibly astonishing for me. Spiral arms very visible absolutely easy with lots of easy HII regions. Maybe one of my most fascinating observation ever. I hope you don't mind when I post my M33 sketch with the 4".

4", 63x

[Howard B]

Most outstanding.

A larger file would be nice. (I am guessing that the files you were actually uploading were larger than what we see.)

Hi Ivan,

Thank you! I forget what the file size limitation is on the DSF (and I can't find it right now) so I posted the smallest files I could, about 100 kb each. The original scans are a bit over 500 kb which seemed too large to post. Do you know the file size limit and where it's posted?

[Howard B]

Very realistic sketch Howard, really impressive. It reminds me very fast and good to the impression through the eyepiece of my 27". 8h of observing time, a lot of work but it was worth for. Now you know and remember very well the galaxy itself.

I had not the guts yet to draw M33 trough big aperture. But I remember very well the observation of M33 a few years ago with my small 4" Newton when I only wanted to take a quick and dirty look at M33 during my Local Group observing project. Conditions were nearly perfect and what I saw was incredibly astonishing for me. Spiral arms very visible absolutely easy with lots of easy HII regions. Maybe one of my most fascinating observation ever. I hope you don't mind when I post my M33 sketch with the 4".

Thanks Uwe, and you're right that I do know my way around M33 now. I understand your reluctance to draw M33 because it has so much detail in a large scope, but you're such a talented sketcher and hope you draw M33 with your 27 inch scope too. I decided I just needed to start and gradually add to my drawing as circumstances permitted, and even though it took so long it's one of my most treasured drawings. And your sketch with your 4 inch scope is fantastic! I never saw so much detail through my 4 inch finder scope, but then I was more interested in the view through the 28 so I didn't put much effort into observing with the finder. Next time I will though, it will be interesting to compare.

[Ivan Maly]

Excellent observation, Uwe.

Howard, although I would be glad to see the 500 KB scan in this case, the 100 KB version could be sufficient. The images we get to see in your post however are under 20 KB. I understand that it was not the size you were actually uploading. Dragan and I had an extended discussion of this issue in the feedback subforum here. Some time in summer I observed that the system switched from normal operation (whatever the file limit had been before that I never hit it, uploading usually around 100 KB) to compressing, without notification of the user, any files that we attach to under 20 KB. Such a small size does not work for sketches that are exceptionally detailed or that have many labeled features. The only way around it that I know of is to reference the image by URL (without retrieving and storing a copy locally on this system), which of course is only possible if it has already been posted on some other website. I believe this is what Uwe did in this thread.

[Howard B]

Thanks Ivan, I remember the thread you're referring to now. I'll post the original scan to my website but probably won't have time until next week.

Uwe, is Ivan's description above how you posted your M33 drawing directly into your message? If not, how did you do it?

[Uwe Glahn]

Howard,

I think Ivan is right. I can not post small Thumbnails, because my original drawings are a bit over 20kb. So I post the image From URL as otherwise customary but without the tick mark before "Retrieve remote file and reference locally". Than my sketch is shown in its original resolution.

[Howard B]

Thanks Uwe, I'm trying that right now - this is my full scan:



Wow, that came through really big! Next time I'll use a smaller file size...

[Ivan Maly]

The picture in the post did not show in my browser, but I got the URL out of its placeholder and so could view your sketch in another window. Excellent detail, and a really great scale of the drawing to show it.

[Howard B]

Only a black square showed up in my iPhone, so in the spirit of experimentation, here's a smaller image -



Hmm, that was 1/10 the file size of the previous one, I'll try again...

[Howard B]

This one is half the size of the last one...



That's a 229 kb file, and is actually the original file I posted!

[Dragan]

Howard,

Something isn't right. Your files aren't coming across. Atleast not on my browsers.

I'm going to have to sit down and fix this file limitation & compression issue once and for all.

I believed I had it fixed. *sigh*

This one is half the size of the last one...



That's a 229 kb file, and is actually the original file I posted!