Messier 46 and NGC 2438
Sketch and Details by Paul Byrne
This was rendered with a fine point pen for the stars, the nebula was sketched with charcoal and blending stump.
I observed the cluster through a 305mm Orion Newtonian and 13mm Nagler. The date was 9th January 2010 at 01.12 UT, it was very cold with a sharp northerly wind, the temperature was well below freezing.
The nebula was not visible until an O-III filter was inserted and it popped into view.
Thanks for your time.
Paul
Paul,
Thank You for beautiful sketch. It looks great.
I am waiting for more sketches from You. 😀
Marek
The visibility of the planetary nebula depends a lot on the darkness of the sky. In dark skies, this planetary is visible without filters in 80mm refractors.
The rendition, however, is excellent as a typical view under dark skies in small scopes.
Larger scopes typically show 2 to 3 x the number of stars in the drawing. Perhaps the drawing of the stars was made with the O-III filter in place? If so, that would explain the number of stars.
Drawing a star cluster is difficult. Kudos to Paul.
Paul,
Very nice sketching. You must have been thrilled when you put in the O-III filter and saw the planetary so clearly.
Frank 🙂
I love M46, but have never seen that nebula before; now I know what to look for. You do a great job with the cluster; in my opinion one of the finest out there.
Peter
I recently observed the same nebula (C8 @ 101x with 19mm Panoptic and @ 203x with Parks Gold 10mm+UHC filter): I was surprised to find it so positively annular, as you finely represented.
As in your case, even if under a quite dark sky, I had troubles in finding i without any filter.
Fred