NGC 6231 SKETCH.

NGC 6231 Sketch, 25 May 2019.

I had some clear skies Friday night the 25th May 2019 and decided to do a sketch of NGC 6231.

NGC 6231 Open cluster in Scorpius.
Magnitude +2.59
Orion XT 8 and 15mm eyepiece.
Black A5 Sketch paper.
White pastel pencils.
Moon at 56.8% illuminated approximately 7 degrees above horizon.
NGC 6231 lies at an approximate distance of 5,900 light years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius.
It was first discovered by the astronomer Giovanni Batista Hodierna in 1654. It was later also cataloged by Edmund Halley(1678), Philippe Loys De Cheseaux(1745-46) and Abbe Lacaille(1751-52).

This sketch was also a chance to try something fun and new.
Rather than only present just the original sketch I wanted to have some fun and inject some digital magic into the sketch. A way to make dull open cluster sketch come to life.

Once I had photographed the original sketch I put that into Star tools and did a crop and a bin on the image. From there I used the heal module to round up and tighten the stars a bit.
Then I used various star mask combinations to artificially colour the stars, from there I added the star spikes for effect.
The final product seems to leap off the page at you and is almost 3D, well to my eye anyhow, you decide.

First image is the original sketch itself.

Then the second image is how it turned out after the star rounding and tightening up.

And then the final image after all the dazzle had been applied.

I hope you have enjoyed this sketch and it's digital development as much as I did!