sketch and photo compared

Yesterday evening, I had hunted around to find an appropriate photo of the Messier 35 (M35) (excluding the nearby NGC objects) so to visually verify I had in fact found the open cluster from my backyard. Doing some mental gymnastics and flipping my log sheet around, I was satisfied that I had hit my target. Today, I carried it a step further.

After scanning my log sheet, I brought it into Macromedia Fireworks, inverted the "colours", free-rotated the image until north was up, and flipped it horizontally (for my SP-C8's mirror diagonal). I continued rotating it until it matched a photograph.

I am impressed! I did a pretty good sketch. Some things are bang on! You be the judge...

	Photograph of M35 from the University of Alabama Astronomy Program web site. Slightly smaller scale than drawing below, representing a wider field. Also, shifted up slightly, compared to sketch.
	This is my sketch, obviously modified. Slightly higher scale, i.e. slightly closer, than the photo.

The university "UA" has an excellent visual table of all the Messier objects.

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In my travels, I came across the Messier list page at wikipedia. I like the overall map image.