[AZ-Observing] The Lowell Clark on Mars
- From: Brian Skiff <Brian.Skiff@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: amastro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 01:23:11 -0700 (MST)
...actually not _on_ Mars, but pointed at it. The Clark refractor
has been booked solid until 3am most nights the past month (and is so
for the next month). Most nights the current Clark "friend" John DeDecker
has been handling the tourists who have ponied up the bucks for these special
late-night viewings. As a student artist, he can be seen sitting downtown at
Macy's Coffeehouse on many days, painting a formal still-life or sketching the
woman sitting across from him while stoking up for the coming night with a
tall French-press canister.
John has been sketching Mars several times each night with colored
pencils, getting excellent very-pale orangish and greyish tones, the shrinking
south polar cap and the tiny north polar cap, accurately capturing the visual
eyepiece impression. He uses the most recent sheets of sketches to show folks
in line for the eyepiece the features to look for; I suspect that given their
usual lack of experience looking through a telescope, the best views of Mars
many of them will have are those drawings.
Like a lot of planetary sketchers, any single drawing of a series will
capture detail on only a small portion of the surface rather than trying to get
all the fleeting minutiae for the whole disc in one comprehensive picture---
it just takes too long to do that. Each sketch is complete, but mostly "fuzzy"
except for concentrated spots. He also makes multiple attempts at getting
the overall pattern right, like the art photographer's approach of taking
lots of pictures and throwing most of them away. John's sketch-sheets (six
discs to a page) have a well-worn look as he shows them to the visitors with
a red flashlight. Since he's been doing Mars viewing with the Clark steadily
since late May, he's got quite a stack of material.
Last night (20/21 Aug), John told me the seeing was especially steady
near meridian crossing, so he got a good set of drawings at full aperture.
"I compared these to some that Lowell did for the same longitudes---he put in
_a_lot_ of canals right in this area", John giggled, pointing somewhere off
Solus Lacus in his sketch. John says he is nevertheless in awe of the
meticulousness of Lowell's drawings, despite their fanciful contents.
\Brian
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