Messier 17, NGC 6618, A Sketch.

NGC 6618 is better known from the famous Charles Messier catalogue as M17.

M17 is a bright diffuse nebula located between 5 and 6 thousand light years away in the constellation Sagittarius.  It is also known as the Swan, Omega Nebula and in the Southern hemisphere it is known as the Lobster Nebula.

M17 was first noted by the Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Cheseaux in 1746, it was also later seen by the French astronomer Charles Messier in the same year and he included it in his Messier Catalogue as M17.

M17 has a visual magnitude of +6.00 and is visible to the naked eye under very dark conditions away from city lights and no light pollution.
It is easily seen even in smaller scopes under moderately light polluted skies, due to my local light pollution, most of the Nebula is washed out, with only the bright core visible to me.
From my backyard the closest naked eye star is Mu Sagittarii, a third magnitude star, from there it is a easy star hop in the eyepiece. 
Once at M17 it is a easy star hop to M16, another bright nebula.

The star charts below are taken from Cartes Du Ciel and show the general location of M17 in the night skies(as seen from my southern hemisphere perspective) and a closer chart of the region.
These are purely posted as a guide and to give you an idea of where to locate M17 in the night skies.

This sketch of M17 was done on the evening of 6 July 2019 from my light polluted backyard in Durban, South Africa.
I used my Orion XT8 telescope with a 25mm(48X) eyepiece for the sketch.
The sketch is done on black A5 sketching paper with a white pastel pencil and thin paint brush.
The stars have been done with the pencil and the nebula is gently brushed on with the paint brush using some white pastel dust.

I took a photograph of the sketch and put that into photoshop.
The camera picks up the texture of the paper and gives it a mottled look or what astrophotographers refer to as "noise". So using photoshop I darkened the background a touch to hide the paper texture, if you take a closer look you can still see some of the texture.
Then I put the circle around the image and added the text.

Then for some fun I took the same original photo of the sketch and ran that through Startools as you would any other astro image.
This then allowed me to add star colours and sharpen and define the magnitudes a little better. Startools also lets me add star spikes which gives a nice effect.
And so I have a digital sketch from my original paper sketch. I like it, hope you do too!

First up is the original sketch, warts and all.

And then the fun bit.

Thanks for taking a look, comments are always welcomed!