Ian, Sounds like a lot of fun and it sounds like you are correct. With a HBeta Filter you might have seen the Horsehead Nebula. The Sky Pocket Atlas has a nice little map of this area. Glad you got out! Jay On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 1:20 AM, Ian Glenn <root.ibg@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

What a wonderful weekend! Just wanted to throw in my two cents, I had the good fortune to be in Zion National Park on Friday and Saturday night, both were cold, clear, and incredibly dark nights. I have only ever used a 6" f/8 Dobsonian, but I was with a friend who had his Orion "Starblast" 4.5" f/4 with him, and appropriately we were up at around 3:45 am when the great nebula in Orion, M42, was well placed for observation. I knew what the nebula looked like in my own relatively small aperture, so I didn't expect any more from his smaller reflector. While the lower magnification of the f/4 allowed me to see more of the arc of the glowing cloud, I couldn't see any of the hints of contrast-y detailed cloudiness I had seen in my own 6".

Then I casually panned northwards, up to Alnitak, the easternmost belt star. I was very surprised to notice some nebulousness around the northeast of the star, sort of like two bands with a dark patch in between them. Panning farther along in that direction, I came upon what looked like two stars surrounded by a somewhat small but brighter nebula that looked like an oval and a rectangle mixed together. I roughed out a quick sketch of each before going to bed. I searched for both of them with my 6" with no success, my lowest magnification was 48x. Today I took a look at Stellarium, and I think I have observed both the Flame Nebula and M78! I stumbled upon both of these last night, using the 4.5" f/4 at 41x, it was incredible!

Ian _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php

-- Jay Eads