Because it is so difficult to take pictures through the telescope in Curaçao because of the ever present strong wind I want to try to manage sketching behind the telescope. Starting during a day session is preferable so I decided to take a look at the sun. There was a sunspot visible today so that was a good opportunity.
After setting up the telescope, the Meade ETX-125, I did a global alignment and then pointed the telescope to the sun. That is not as easy as it sounds because you cannot look through the sight directly into the sun. But after some searching the sun was visible in the telescope. The sunspot was about in the middle and somewhat to the upper rim of the sun in the telescope.
First I made a sketch of the sun as a whole (eyepiece 32mm, magnification 59x) to show the position of the sunspot on the sun. After finishing that first drawing I made two more, one with an eyepiece of 15mm, magnification 127x, and one with an eyepiece of 26mm with a 2x barlow, magnification 146x. The last sketch is shown here. And looking at this sketch I realize that two things are missing. A measure to give an indication of the size of the sunspot and the orientation of the image. Something to pay attention to the next time. The scale can easily be determined if you know the actual field of view of the eyepiece.
Indeed sketching has the advantage that other people have mentioned. You have to pay a lot of attention to detail to be able to transfer the image to the paper. Far more than when you look more casually under normal circumstances. I spent about 1 hour making these sketches and that means that I spent a lot more time looking at this sunspot than what I normally would have done.