Woohoo! First time spotting Orion Nebula

[jonathan]

Just had a quick peek out there with the 8x42 bins, I noticed a bit of a grey smudge out of the corner of my eye just down from Orion's belt. I surmised this must be the famed Orion Nebula, later confirmed with Stellarium. So chuffed to have found it without even looking, a pleasant surprise after so much bad weather recently.

The seeing is surprisingly good out there tonight, though the thick blanket of snow on the ground put me off getting the telescope out. A few foot steps in that stuff soon turns it into an ice rink.

[brantuk]

Sometimes it's fun to just pan around the sky to "see what you can see" and then confirm any interesting sightings in stellarium. Full of nice surprises.

Certainly sounds like M42 as you described it - when you get the scope out see if you can resolve the 4 stars of the trapezium within M42

[Nexus 6]

Hi Johnathan,

M42 looks really good with bins, I'm sure you'll enjoy it with your scopel. Agree about the back yard, to risky setting up with all this Ice around.

Alan

[Neilius]

This is weird because I was looking at it tonight too! It appeared as a greenish smudge, with the 4 stars of the trapezium glowing to light up the cloud. Wonderful sight.

[Luke]

Well done, Jonathan, a good find!

[jonathan]

Yup, definitely one to go on the list for telescope viewing!

Would a nebula filter help with this on a 2" 38mm eyepiece? I've been looking at the 2" Skywatcher UHC Filter from FLO.

[nightfisher]

i viewed M42 neb a week or so back with my 15x70`s, really good, cant wait to get my scope on it