Stellar horizons

It's absolutely awesome to be a visual amateur astronomer. I know many people are slightly disappointed when they look through a telescope for the first time, since the objects look so much more modest live than in the space telescope pictures. I've never had that problem. One of the things that have kept me so irrevocably fixed with astronomy is my inbound talent to see and feel the interstellar visions in 3D. Sometimes I feel sad that I don't have the knowledge to change these visions into art for other people to see them, too. (Thank god, we have blogs like Astro Anarchy.)

But I can do something else: I can paint some of the things I love, as I've shown in the previous posts. Today, I finished my latest painting depicting M20 or Trifid Nebula. When I was a kid, one of my biggest sorrows was that you can't see this nebula from Finland (well, you can but it's so close to the horizon that it's not much use). To see it was one of my biggest reasons to go to New Zealand. (Believe it or not!)

I'm happy to notice two things. Firstly, nowadays I like to make bigger paintings. And I'm not pursuing my perfectionism with such an urge anymore. When you look at the picture, it might sound rather weird to you. But I only used three sessions to paint it and I wasn't so detailed as I would have been a couple of years ago. For me to say that is something quite peculiar, but I guess I'm the only one who really understands what I mean...

But yes, the painting came out quite nice. And now I'm feeling high because of the varnish smell in my room. Yay.