What am i looking at right now ? 24-01-24

[GasGiant]

Please keep in mind im a noob and I have barely a clue what im looking at but ..

What am I looking at here 

I drew this pic as I saw it ( ish ) but have flipped it for the image you see here.

 

So a cluster of stars with a greyish greenish haze around them as shown. Or there about.

Annoyingly I cant line Stellarium up accurately, Is there a way to do that

I offered up a compass on my phone and it says roughly 200 degrees S 

Id love to know what im looking at !  Any ideas 

 

Carl 

 

[Ags]

Orion Nebula, with the little Trapezium cluster of stars at its heart?

[GasGiant]

Oh, exciting.  My first nebula

 

It's Between the moon and Jupiter 

[Mandy D]

@GasGiant I took these snapshots of M42 back in November. I've cropped and rotated the first one and left the colours alone, so it should look something like what you saw. The second image is better exposed and shows more of the detail and a wider field, without being rotated. I think your drawing pretty much matches what is in my first image. It is a beautiful nebula that is worth spending some time on. Congratulations on finding it and producing an accurate sketch.

[GasGiant]

That's fab. Yeah, that's what I saw.

 

I looked at stellarium but really couldn't figure it out. I did wonder if it was m42.  I don't think it helped that the eyepiece flipped it ! 

 

Lots to learn 😀

[Mandy D]

7 minutes ago, GasGiant said:

Lots to learn 😀

The various rotations and mirror views of the different scopes, coupled with the rotation of the sky when not using an equatorial mount really adds to the complications. When imaging, I rarely bother to rotate the image to match it's standard orientation and prefer to leave it as seen. It's all about artistic interpretation for me, unless there is  good reason to correctly orient my imges.

Have you got a copy of  Turn Left at Orion? It shows drawings of the various views of common objects in the different types of telescopes. It may help more than Stellarium.

[GasGiant]

6 hours ago, Mandy D said:

Have you got a copy of  Turn Left at Orion? It shows drawings of the various views of common objects in the different types of telescopes. It may help more than Stellarium.

Just bought a copy 🤙

[Naughty Neal]

The belt of Orion unmistakeable and the neb.

Edited January 25 by Naughty Neal

[LondonNeil]

D'oh!  I think this was my problem when trying to look at Orion for the first time last week.   What I saw in the ep seemed to bear no resemblance to what I expected and thought my mount problems must have me missing....d'oh! It was flipped,  of course!

[GasGiant]

Managed a pic tonight !

[Mandy D]

8 minutes ago, GasGiant said:

Managed a pic tonight !

 

Well, I think that confirms it, nicely. Well done.

[Ags]

The big pink blob is M42 and the smaller pink blob is M43. Your camera is sensitive to red hydrogen emissions so it looks pink but your eyes are much more sensitive to the green oxygen emissions so you saw it as green in your initial report.

[JOC]

From the description alone I guessed the orion nebula lol!