Visual observing and locating deep-sky objects manually, making notes and drawing what I see via the eyepiece is fun. I don’t embellish my drawings, but only what I see and with no computer enhancements.

To locate my selected deep-sky objects, for the evening, I just match up my finder view with the atlas and attempt to point the scope at the exact spot.

I use different sizes of brass and steel rings to match my finder(s) field of view. My choice for the last 15 years plus have been the S&T Pocket Sky Atlas’ which are compact and easy to use in the field. The black stars are so much easier to use as compared to atlas’ with white stars on black backgrounds. Plus, I like the larger format pages of the Pocket Sky Atlas’.

If you will notice, I draw circles (on the atlas pages) are for my “selected” objects. I don’t mind all of the drawn circles, soaked pages from dew, which shows the atlas’ have been well used.

A few examples of my humble pencil sketches. I have more than 200 sketches using this format (5 x 8) and about 1,500 using much smaller 3 x 5 cards.