Apophenia, or Patternicity, is the hardwired way out brain looks for patterns in an otherwise unfamiliar or chaotic field. It is unavoidable. Seeing a face in a nebula is one such example. The Eskimo Nebula is one such example. In my time spent with the Moon, I've come across many such apparitions, faces, alphanumeric characters (the famous Lunar X is one), owls, pine trees, even a map of Australia. I've also had many such experiences with solar prominences, seeing dragons, lions and even giant bugs crawling over the solar surface!
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I too try to avoid making suggestions, but sometimes people experience a particularly striking "vision" and will exclaim at what they see. Can't stop that either, and it can make for a more lively and exciting experience for everyone.
Seeing colour through the eyepiece is a very important thing too. The biggest problem here firstly is that astronomy, particularly in amateur astronomy circles, is very male dominated. Thing with males is 1/3 are colour blind to some extent, from very mild to next to no colour perception. Add to this that colour perception also changes over time, as can visual acuity (as Glen mentioned leading many people down the photography side of things). This has seen many men be most adamant that humans "cannot see any colour through the eyepiece". Dig a little deeper and it turns out that the men making these declarations are colour blind, and at least at low levels of illumination that is seen through an eyepiece. But people do see colour, but the range of colour perception varies tremendously. I've saw pinks, greens and blues the first time I saw M42 through my 17.5" dob. Sadly though now 8 years later, I've lost the pinks and blues, and the pale green is also less vibrant,
The Blue Planetary however is still quite striking for me.
One thing I try to do at outreach events is ask people if they can see any colour in the DSO's they are looking at, in particular M42, Eta Carina and the Jewel Box. Over the years I've been asking people, females have slightly better colour perception than males in this very niche visual experience (which astro is). One young lady also saw red in Eta Carina! But I also know of one fellow who is older than me who can also see this.
Ken, the topic of the book you are reading is something that I've just come to think about too, provoked entirely by this thread and the images I posted of early sketches. I've come to notice that there is a huge discrpancy between early sketches and early prints of sketches - these are two very different things, but sadly few people are aware that there is a distinction between the two, and prints of sketches are often passed on as being the "original". Early print technology did not allow for the same quality of image copy and reproduction, even more so of very low contrast images, such as astro sketches. That fabulous sketch of M51 done by Parsons I posted in an earlier post, there was no way possible for that piece to be reprinted to the same quality possible today. Instead, the original was redone in a print format of the time, and often NOT by the original artist, and this second author would have no experience of the image seen through the eyepiece, instead they reproduce what they "think" they see and understand. Below is the original sketch by William Parsons, and next to it is the reworked printed version. And this reproduction is one example of the better quality reproductions. Print technology is also still improving today for the reproduction of astro sketches alone.
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It also needs to be kept in mind that not all early astronomers were gifted illustrators. Some would struggle with stick figures, but they did their best. And with the technical difficulties of the time with printing, the reproduced sketches bare even less resemblance to the actual object. But really this is now a different topic altogether from the original question posed in this thread, but I feel it needed some clarification.
Awesome thread, Glen!
I've come to learn and understand a whole lot more about the history of my own niche in astro, sketching
