On the night of February 4, 2021 I setup my 6" Newtonian so that I could get a nice wide field view of the Orion Nebula. To make it an even wider field of view I made sure to use my 32mm eyepiece to see as much as I could. I thought about using the 24mm but it was too narrow of a field, and I found the 32mm to frame it quite nicely. I'm pretty sure I had just about the whole sword of Orion in the eyepiece which was pretty cool to see. Wider field of view also meant that some of the dimmer stars in the nebula and surrounding areas were harder to spot because they were washed out by the light pollution. I had to use my Orion Ultrablock Filter in order to tease out some of the fainter detail of the nebula that I just couldn't see without it in.
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| M42 and M43 the Orion Nebula in the constellation Orion |
I did this sketch on black canson paper with white charcoal pencil for star placement, and a white pastel pencil and blending stump for the nebula. I also use the kneaded eraser to dim some stars, and to lift some of the nebula in order fade it out a bit more in some areas.
If you would like to see where this object is located in the night sky along with a time lapse of this sketch done at the eyepiece check out the video below:
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