On the night of January 9, 2021 I pointed my 8" SCT at an open cluster located in the arm of the constellation Orion. This small open cluster is only around 7 light years across and sits around 3600 light years away. Easily spotted in my 32mm eyepiece, but I wanted this cluster to take up more of my field of view so I put in my Vixen 8-24mm zoom eyepiece and after playing around with magnification I decided 24mm was the best view.
Overall there weren't a lot of stars in the field of view, or even the cluster. Sometimes you can get your telescope pointed at an open cluster and find that there are a daunting amount of stars to try and place in the sketch. This one was relatively straight forward and most of the stars in the sketch were easily visible and didn't require a lot of averted vision for finding some stars.
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| NGC2169 an open cluster in the constellation Orion |
This sketch was done on black canson paper with a white charcoal pencil for star placement, and a kneaded eraser to dim some of the stars in the field of view. I also used some color pencils to add color to a few of the stars which showed color through the eyepiece.
To see a time lapse of this sketch along with where to find it in the night sky be sure to check out the video below. Also in the video I mirrored the image to show off this clusters signature 37 look which I was completely oblivious to while actually sketching this object since my SCT mirrors what I look at.
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