Zooming into M42

 

Every year I try to do a sketch of the most daunting object in the night sky: The Great Orion Nebula. In 2017 I did that with a 10″ dobson at low power, my first real struggle with a nebulous object:

 

 

 

 

In 2018 I did two sketches with the 15 x 70 binoculars; one of the Belt and one of the Sword. Afterwards I fit the two in the correct position and angle to create a mosaic:

 

 

 

In 2019 it was time to zoom in with the 16″ dobson and try to recreate the eyepiece view. Not an easy task because of the great many details that are visible then, Details that seem to change by use of different filters and details that seem to be perfectly visible during one night and get washed out on another. Therefore I think it’s impossible to truly reproduce the view, but that doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t try…

 

 

 

In 2020 no sketch was produced in this part of the sky, but in 2021 I pointed the scope a bit north of M42 to have a closer look at M43, or De Mairan’s Nebula. This is the very first sketch I did with the 16″ Alkaid on La Palma. The magnification used was 259x. I left out the neighboring nebulosity of M42 which was in view as well so that I could really focus on this separate object.