Messier Sketch Project, Your Help Wanted...

You may have seen the Messier Poster that was created some time ago, the one that has nice photos of all 110 of the Messier objects. I will be working over the year to re-create this poster (sort of) with hand sketches done by myself and I am hoping others in TAAS. I am in need of any and all sketches that you have done or will do of any of the 110 Messier objects.


If you are like me and enjoy doing sketches at the eyepiece or if you do not currently sketch but have wanted to do more I hope you will take this opportunity to do some more sketching. I am hoping to get a few sketches of each of the objects by different people so that I have a variety of views to choose from, we all see things just a little different than others. Over the next several months I will use the President’s Remarks portion of the newsletter to feature a different constellation and I am hoping to have some sketches of the Messier objects that reside within that constellation to feature in the article. I am beginning this month with a constellation that will soon be lost until next fall, Auriga – the Charioteer.

This time of the year Auriga sits high in the western sky just after sunset, moving below the horizon and setting at about midnight. Look for a fairly bright grouping of stars forming a pentagon shape, the brightest five stars is Capella and sitting directly below Capella is a small grouping of three stars that form a triangle. The star opposite the pentagon from Capella is Elnath and this star is actually one of the horns of Taurus.

There are a couple of stories that go with Auriga, but all the stories describe it as a Charioteer holding the reigns of the chariot in his left hand and cradling a goat and her kids in his right arm, Capella is the right shoulder of the charioteer and means “she goat.” The Charioteer in some stories is believed to be Erechtheus, son of the Roman God Vulcan, who was the first man to harness four horses to a chariot.

Other stories claim that the Charioteer represents the ill fated Myrtilus who was thrown from the chariot by the daughter of King Oenomaus, Hippodamia after a quarrel with one of her suitors, Pelops. Myrtilus was the in charge of the Kings chariot; he rigged the chariot so the wheels would come off during a chariot race with Pelops eventually killing the King. When Myrtilus tried to claim Hippodamia as his bride she refused and pushed him from the chariot and ran off with Pelops.

There are three very nice Open Clusters within Auriga M36, M37 and M38 all three are not too difficult to find and can be seen from Albuquerque so they are nice objects for public star parties. M37 is a very dense grouping of stars with a few bright stars and lots of dimmer stars; it is easily identifiable as a cluster but not quite dense enough to look like a globular cluster. M38 is not quite as dense as M37 but there are far brighter stars within the view, again easily identifiable as cluster but a fairly loose cluster of stars. M36 is the least dense of the three but again there are quite a few bright stars and it is fairly easy to identify it as a cluster within the field.

Now that I have shared some of my sketches of a few of the Messier objects please consider sharing some of your sketches and email them to me at president@taas.org, I would like to feature them in some of my upcoming articles and would really like your help in creating sketches of all 110 of the Messier objects.