Hello,
I recently discovered Astronomy Sketch of the Day, and since I just started sketching I wanted to share my Orion Nebula sketch.
This is M42 and M43 in the constellation of Orion.
Diffuse nebula
Sketch was done in Plattsburgh, NY
Done on February 19, 2012
Large sketch pad, 2H pencil for the stars and Charcoal 557-6B ex. soft for the nebula itself, used a smudge stick to fan out the nebula. Scanned into computer and smoothed out with Gimp to remove the paper texture and round out the stars.
Used a Celestron Omni XLT 150 Reflector with a 25mm eyepiece giving me 30x magnification.
Very clear skies, 4/5 transparency, 2/5 seeing, 30°F.
-Mike Rector
Wonderful sketch. Great texture in the clouds. I’ve often found, from very dark viewing sites, that M42 has a feathered look to it, with overlapping strips of nebular matter. I can never see color in it, though; only variegations of gray.
Great sketch! Thanks!
@Andrew English
Thank you very much, Andrew. I forgot to mention in my description that this is in a quite light polluted zone, and orange zone on the bortle scale. I’ve also never seen any color at the eyepiece, think I’d need a bigger scope and darker skies to get any green/blue out of it. Thanks again.
Mike,
Your sketch looks great. Well done, thanks for posting.
Frank 🙂
Terrific sketch that really brings out the structure in M42. Well done.