This is the drawing of my life. The sight of M 83 captured me immediately as I directed the scope towards the galaxy in the zenith in the perfect Namibian sky. One can see the miriad of details of the high quality photos in real life - you can wonder among the star forming regions of the spiral arms, you can almost touch the points where the spiral arms break of bifurcate, or you can simply just submerge into the whirling spiral. It took 2-3 hours to draw the starfield and I was very impatient towards the end - I couldn't wait to get to the galaxy. The limiting magnitude of the drawing can be about 16.5mg. I don't know exactly because there are more stars in the drawing than in Guide. It was 2-3 hours of pure joy to draw the galaxy. Towards the end it made my flesh creep as I understood the datails.

The core is very bright and compact but not stellar. The bar and the inner parts of the arms are bright as well. The outer sections of the arms are much fainter and they disappear in the velvet black background in a very diffuse way. The lower inner arm shows more contrast and the upper inner arm is thicker and more torn apart. A great part of the galaxy is inhomogenious and the knots, ripples and dark areas can mostly be drawn by position. Though the chaos at the right end of the bar is quite hard to untangle. I won't forget the moment when - after ~5 hours of drawing - I spotted that the bar and the upper inner arm are full of tiny bright filaments and dark dust lanes. This makes the whole inner part of the galaxy whirl. Now, after more than 2 years it still makes me shiver as I think about this sight / experience.