Exhausted after a ten hour drive home from Idaho Falls today. I had to fight against my exhaustion to go out tonight; and, as usual, I'm glad I did. It was refreshing, relaxing, and peaceful once I got the equipment setup.
Seems to be more easily seen without the Ultrablock filter. AV does not do much for the size. Getting the impression of a brighter center (maybe a star); because of this it almost has a similar appearance to a faint galaxy with a bright core.
Ultrablock filter makes a drammatic impact here. NGC 1977 is much easier to see. I had trouble seeing NGC 1973 until I noticed that my eyes were constantly drawn to M42. I tried moving M42 outside of the FoV, and this seemed to have helped. I could eventually detect a noise around a star to the NW of NGC 1977 (the noise fell outside of the stars airy disk)
I wish I could say the same for NGC 1975, but I could not get a confident observation of it.
