Theoretically, M8 should be bright enough to display some color--especially for you, for whom it is high in the sky. Some big scope users have reported seeing pinkish hues in M8, but more observers have seen some color in M20, from what I've heard. I've seen pinkish hues in the emission part of M20, though never blue hues in the reflection part. Many planetaries display color when they are high in the sky--usually greenish or greenish-blue hues. A Lumicon UHC filter from the '90s with the "red leak" shows the colors better on many nebulae because it filters out a lot of the frequencies that overwhelm the rosy hues that are there but often too faint to see. The recent UHC filters, though, no longer have the red passband and don't display the rose hues. That's why I recommend not using a filter on M27 (though perhaps a broadband filter might help, because primarily yellow and orange frequencies are diminished). Yes, M42 is SO detailed I suspect it would take a lifetime to see all of its details visually. One of my favorite details is to look for the "mackerel sky" mottling in the Trapezium area. The brightest part of the nebula, under higher powers, breaks up into sections that look like a group of cotton balls wadded together, or, as Admiral Smyth stated, "like a mackerel sky", an expression from our history that describes the high clouds that seem to be broken into little round segments extending across the sky, presumably because they represent the appearance of fish scales (earlier Americans were a lot more familiar with the appearance of different fish than are modern Americans who buy all their fish pre-cut). If you are an artist, you might try your hand at drawing what you see. This, I find, helps you see even more. Good viewing.
-------------------- Don Pensack
12.5" Truss Dob, 5" Maksutov
Sustaining Lifetime IDA member, TeleVue junkie
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Re: Is it possible to see the nebula with colour?
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