I see where you are coming from now.
Sketches actually relates exactly to your arguement, just as much as observation because they are the direct consequence of observation. Is the illustrator depicting what they are seeing or "wishful detail"...
I have read reports and seen sketches that have left me thinking "Really!? They saw
that with
that scope???"
But I also know that experience and visual acuity varies tremendously beyween people. Some men scream til they are blue in the face that humans cannot see colour through an eyepiece (1/3 of all males are colour blind to some extent). Well I can, and I can also atest that colour perception also changes within individuals over time.
However, I would also have to agree that there can also be an element of "wishful detail". Now if this is purely wishful or deliberate deception, that's really grey. Same with imaging. I know that there are people who don't delare all their data sources...
Wavytone started a thread in this forum about the Saturnian moons. I thought I could make out Mimas, but seeing wasn't stable enough and the glare of Saturn added to the confusion of the scene, so I opted to say "no" to seeing Mimas on that night. I honestly thought I saw what may have been Mimas, but my experience told me the image was too fleeting and too bright, though not impossible, but certainly unconvincing to my experience. I'm not making muself out to be a righteous prat - I'm man enough to declare I have my own foibles. But that line between wishful and certainty can be a vague one...
By the same token, those same photographs can also serve to prove that you actually did see what you thought you did. This very often happens to me when i compare a sketch I've done to a photo of it. I may go into a sketch thinking "ok, this object will only be so big, so I'll make my scale this size", only to find that the longer I spend on that object I can make out that it extends further and further and further again, and I find that I actually can't fit the whole thing in because that reference photo or initial observation happened to be too cropped.
That's one advantage of doing my DSO sketching surrounded by others - they've also seen the same object through my scope that same night, so I will be called out very quickly
