NGC 6752 A GLOBULAR CLUSTER SKETCH.

21 June 2017.

NGC 6752.

NGC 6752 is a globular cluster located in the constellation Pavo. It is at an estimated distance of 13 000 light years from Earth and 17 000 light years from the galactic center.
It is listed at an apparent magnitude of 5.4 and is estimated to be 11.78 Billion years old.

Here is a Stellerium screenshot showing it's location.

I set about observing and also sketching this cluster on the evening of the 21st June 2017.
I had left the scope out for two hours for some cool down time. At about 22H00 I ventured out into the cold winter night dressed warm and armed with my sketch bag, eyepieces and enthusiasm.

Before viewing my intended target for the night I first took in some old friends to help aid in some dark adaption and get some valuable star hopping time in on the dob. Having not used her in a while the skills become rusty. 
What was also nice is that after the sketching session I was able to squeeze in NGC 6720 also known as the Ring Nebula or Messier 57.
Using both a UHC and OIII filter improved the views. I noted a small white/grey ring sitting in space. It appeared almost like a small ring of smoke blown by a smoker. It is very small and does not hold up well to magnification. This is probably due to the fact it is in a part of the sky that sits in the Durban light dome and the sky glow is severe over that way. This was my first ever view of NGC 6720 so that was a nice icing on the cake after the sketching session.

Having done a tour of the southern skies I set about locating NGC 6720. It was a reasonably easy star hop considering most of the stars in that region are not visible to the naked eye.
Once in view I spent another half an hour letting my eye adapt to the image and hopefully take in as many photons as possible. Once I was satisfied with what I was seeing and had planned the sketch out in my mind, I do this by looking for patterns in the stars in the cluster and hopefully try and replicate that on paper, I then began sketching using soft white pastel pencil on A5 black sketching paper.

The sketch took a tad more than a hour to complete.
By this time my dark adaption had grown and with averted vision I was able to see a nice soft diffuse glow emanating from the core and spreading outward. With direct vision I was able to discern a multitude of brighter stars peppering the cluster with many more dusting the spaces in between.
It really does make for a very pleasing cluster to view and sketch. I really would like to view and sketch this GC from my dark site and do a comparison of the views.
I am sure that my light pollution is hiding a great deal more of this lovely cluster. just as it does with the others.

So here are two images, the first is my set up for the night and then the sketch itself.