In the early hours of June 17, 2020 I had the pleasure of aiming my 8" SCT at a popular nebula, the Eagle Nebula, or M16 in the constellation Serpens. This nebula is well known as the Pillars of Creation for it's star forming region. M16 is around 7,000 light years away and spans an area of the sky of 70x55 light years. When discovered the nebula itself was not seen and the star cluster within it was designated as M16. It was with astrophotography when the nebula itself became visible.
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| M16 the Eagle Nebula in Serpens |
The nebula being so dim and washed out in my light polluted skies to the south, I had a really hard time pulling out this nebula. I placed the stars using my 0.63x focal reducer, and after placing the stars with the white charcoal pencil I added my Orion Ultrablock filter which helped dim some of the light pollution allowing me to see the slightest hints of nebula within the star cluster. I used a white pastel pencil and blending stump to place the nebulous region I saw.
If you'd like to see where to find this object in the night sky along with a time lapse of me sketching this object at the eyepiece check out the video below:
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