M42

The Orion Nebula: A Night under the Stars with the 24” Steve Swayze

M42 The Orion Nebula

24” f/3.17 Steve Swayze

332x

Vancouver, WA

September 2025

With the weather changing over to Fall seasonal patterns, and the incoming rain, I decided to take the 24” f/3.17 Steve Swayze out for a long extended spin since it’s seen little use over the summer, as I’ve been using the 17.5” f/3.4 Archie Carl as my primary scope. I didn’t plan on sketching anything at all, but sketching Neptune and Uranus got me in a sketching mood, so I decided to wait until Orion got a little higher in the sky, and started this sketch around 3 or 4 in the morning.

This was a good opportunity for me to practice adding depth to my nebula sketches, like I did for the Eastern Veil. The Orion Nebula has always appeared green to me, however, when panning around the nebula at 332x, I noticed what would normally be black background surrounding the nebula itself had a very light green hue to it. It was subtle, so I used a wide diameter makeup brush and very lightly dabbled green chalk around the nebula to depict what I saw. For the nebula itself, I used a small eyeliner brush with two ends, a rounded end and a flat end. I used the rounded end to sketch in the nebula, and to add depth, I used the flat end to sketch in the wisps and filaments that ripple through the nebula to reveal its layered complexity on the paper. 

I decided not to correct the stars with my black gel pen, for risk of overlaying black marks on top of the green chalk. I did however, sketch in the stars first, starting with the trapezium along with the E and F component stars, and the surrounding star field, before I put down the green chalk.

It was a real treat to see the Orion Nebula at 332x in the eyepiece, and then see the entire Orion complex at 132x in the 9” f/3 finderscope mounted on the 24”, using a 92 degree eyepiece. WOW! A gift from Steve Swayze. He built this scope, and I only took it across the finish line. Andrea was saying this morning that I’m ridiculously spoiled with the 24” having the 9” f/3 mounted on it. It’s just so fantastic to observe at high power, then go observe through the finderscope for a nice low power 2.4° wide field. Spoiled indeed.