I am Todd Vance, in Bowie, MD. I am a mathematician, and hobbies include amateur astronomy and saxophone.
This weblog is my online journal for my astronomical observations. I plan to include descriptions and scanned drawings of what I see, as well as photography and other astronomical things.
I have been observing and sketching my observations for over a year. I had searched the internet for pages about sketching and found some good ones, but not all that many. I decided the internet could use one from a true beginner. Other beginners could then get a slow introduction via my experiences!
A year ago, I read 21st Century Astronomy, a college-level introduction to the universe (focusing more on the workings of the universe than on observation). I then read other books, such as The Stars: A New Way to See Them to learn to recognize constellations, and A Field Guide to Stars and Planets for more in-depth information on observing the sky. At the same time, I went out as often as it was clear for naked eye observing, binocular observing, and eventually, I bought a telescope. I also joined an astronomy club.
Early in my hobby, I started sketching what I saw. This helped me see more–it made me view the field critically, forced me to look for longer periods of time, and helped me keep track of transient stars (so dim, you see them only when the atmosphere settles down for a second or so). This was a challenge, as I am no artist, yet I continue to improve and enjoy doing it. The drawings also help me check what I saw against star maps and confirm that I found my target object. They also help me remember what it looks like so I may find it again.
I plan to post drawings, descriptions, and so on, i.e. observation reports.
A handy mnemonic: “Oh be a fine girl: kiss me!” at the top. This is the astronomer’s mnemonic for remembering the spectral classes of stars, from hottest to coolest: O, B, A, F, G, K, M. For example, the sun is a G-type star. The colors of the words approximately match the color of a “typical” star of the class.
The title area consists of a picture of a four-day old moon, the math building where I earned my degree (with Orion above it), the Great Nebula of Orion, my sketch of the Pleiades, a waning gibbous moon, and Orion from my back yard.
The background is a Hubble Space Telescope photograph of Messier 52, also known as the Whirlpool Galaxy, just below the handle of the Big Dipper. It was the first galaxy to be noticed to have a spiral structure–this at a time when galaxies were thought to be nebulae within our own galaxy. This was thought to be a stage where the nebula was condensing into a planetary system. We now know M52 is a galaxy similar to the Milky Way, and the visible spiral structure comes from star formation along density wave fronts.
