Object Name: M42, M43
Object Type: Nebula
Location: Russia, Strelech’ya Polyana
Date: 23 october 2011
Media: graphite pencil on white paper, inversion and little star correction (so they’d look more round) in PhotoShop CS2
That night I actually saw the Great Nebula for the first time in normal conditions and under pretty dark skies (somewhere 5.7m stars were seen). And this sketch is the second attempt to draw it. Using my 12″ Dob it took me about 1.5 hours.
M42 looked fantastically bright, but it’s a pity I didn’t guess to put 12.5mm eyepiece instead of 25mm while sketching the brightest part, the one around trapezium, because only then the structure of nebula’s filaments was easily seen. Under the wings, the space of 10′ maybe, was filled with such dense cloud, that it reminded me of M31’s core, but lower it became more diffuse and slowly disappeared. Above M42 M43 was also visible, like a fat comma. And it seemed to me, that its tail was a little bit separated from the main body.
Location: Tale, Austria
Date: 18.10.2011
Media: pencil on white paper, digital work done with “Gimp 2”
Equipment: Skywatcher Equinox 100/900ED
The typical dumbbell shape wasn´t quite obvious for me. Well, at the east end i could catch a glimpse of some kind of a bay. I´m not really sure about the “ears”. But with peripheral vision there was a subtle glimmer.
I made the sketch at the Okanagan Observatory on July 9 2011.
I used pastels on black paper along with a brush and smudging stump. The stars are a mixture of white charcoal and a white gel pen.
The sketch was done with a 15″ dob using a 20mm Nagler as well as a Lumicon UHC filter.
The SQM-L was 21.24
This last new moon I managed to pin onto paper the fabulous Swan Nebula, M17. After my previous new Moon’s view of it, I’ve been chaffing at the bit to get back to it. It is just so detailed, expansive, and subtle in features.
Most striking is the particularly dark hollow that is surrounded by the ‘neck’ of the Swan. It is so much darker than the surrounding space. Here is a tell-tale-sign of not only a dark pillar obstructing the light from the nebula, but that there is so much background light that comes from the background, invisible stars in this section of the Milky Way, that this dark pillar is just SO BLACK.
My previous look at the Swan had me see for the first time the highly textured nature of the ‘bird’s body’. This time, with the added time spent on looking at it, I noticed so much more extensive nebulosity that radiates out from the obvious avian shape. These extensions themselves are so very detailed.
As my big dob is of the good old push-pull type, the constant manual moving of the scope had my eye picking up this faint network of faint smokiness, that a ‘static’ image from a driven scope may not have allowed to be viewed so easily. Such as the heightened darkness immediately above and below the bird’s back and body, only to have more nebulosity sit above and below it, and even behind it. The effect was akin to a swan emerging from out of a soft bank of fog, and the bird’s movement through it causing a delicate disruption to the fog. Just beautiful.
This was a real challenge to sketch. So much of the object is so faint, needing averted vision to make it out. The mottled texture of the bird’s plumage was extraordinarily difficult to make out and lay down faithfully. So much of this is all averted vision work.
By far my most satisfying sketch to date. I hope you enjoy it too.
Object: M17, the Swan Nebula
Scope: 17.5”, f/4.5, push-pull dob.
Gear: 13mm Ethos (thanks Jim!), + OIII filter, 154X
Date: 30th July, 2011
Location: Mount Blackheath Lookout, NSW, Australia
Materials: White soft pastels & charcoal pencil on A4 size black paper, done over 3hrs.
Object Name: NGC 6853 (M 27)
Object Type: Planetary nebula
Location: Cittadella (Italy)
Date: September 10, 2010
Media: graphite pencil, white paper, inverted in Gimp
Instrument: 120 mm achromatic refractor (f/8.3)
Eyepiece: Flat Field 16 mm (62.5x) and O-III filter
Conditions: Clear with some light pollution
A classic planetary nebula observed from a suburban locality. The use of the O-III filter really improves the observation of this object.
Clear skies,
Massimo
I made this sketch with my 16 inch Meade LB telescope. This night, I had a good seeing (4/5). It was the first time I saw this nebulae and I enjoyed !! Even in a 16” telescope, it is very hard to notice the object without an OIII filter. Even with the OIII, the object is not luminous. But sketching this object permit me to reveal all the details the object had to give to me 🙂
PROTO-PLANETARY NEBULA
CYGNUS
DISTANCE: 2600 ly
29/9/2011 20:10 UT
CONDITIONS: CLOUDLESS BUT HAZY. NELM 4.5
OBSERVER: PAUL METTAM
LOCATION: LONG EATON, ENGLAND.
TELESCOPE: 12″ SCT F10
MAGNIFICATION: X 660 !
MEDIA: GRAPHITE PENCIL, WHITE PAPER.
NGC 7027 is classed as a proto-planetary nebula: a star at the very earliest stages of forming a true planetary nebula. At a magnification of X116 this object looks like an out of focus 9th magnitude star elongated NNW-SSE and has a pale blue colour. Despite the dubious seeing conditions I cast caution to the wind and increased the magnificaton to X660 and could begin to see more detail. A dark rift seperated the nebula into two lobes, the lobe to the north appearing slightly larger and brighter. The northwest side of this lobe has a bright patch and other less certain areas of variation could be seen. As the observation progressed I thought i could see a faint outer envelope of nebulosity but this may of been due to the front lens of the telescope misting up!
Object Name: NGC 6888 (Crescent Nebula)
Object Type: emission nebula
Location: Budy Dłutowskie – small village in central Poland
Date: 05.08.2011
Media: graphite pencil, white paper, color invert
Telescope: Columbus 13” (320/1387 Newtonian telescope) + Baader Zoom Mark III (set on 20mm) + Lumicon UHC
Seeing: 2/5
Transparency: 1/5
NELM: 6,1 mag
Hello
It was really good night. Clarity was very good so even faint objects were visible. NGC 6888 – emission nebula in Cygnus (in internet, you can find many pictures of this object and much less observation reports and sketches). Formed by stellar wind from central Wolf-Rayet star (WR136). On sketch you can see shape of crescent and after few minutes of eye adaptation, also faint structures inside nebula were visible.
