NGC 2736 is pretty low for most of us northern hemisphere observers… but at least it is 2° higher than Omega Centauri… On a decent night, I can get pretty good views from my local desert observing location near San Diego, California, when the Pencil Nebula culminates at about 13° above my southern horizon.
The emission nebula NGC 2736 is the brightest part of the 11,000-year-old Vela Supernova Remnant, which is one of the largest and brightest features in the X-ray sky, being about 8° across… about the same size as the constellation Crux!
On 1 March 1835, John Herschel discovered this object on March 1st, 1835 at the Cape of Good Hope and described it as "eeF, L, vvmE; an extraordinary long narrow ray of excessively feeble light; position 19 ±. At least 20' long, extending much beyond the limits of the field..."
The length of the Pencil Nebula is about the same as the diameter of the full moon, so a low-power eyepiece is the way to start when observing it. A 31mm Nagler with an NPB filter in my 25” f/5 Obsession Classic yields about a 45’ FOV and is a good starting point for me. It was easily picked up as a long and ghostly streak, slightly warped at each end. Increasing the power shows that there is some vague structure to be teased out and some variability in brightness along the length, with the northern portion being brighter than the southern, which just seems to fade away into nothingness.
On a decent night, I can get pretty good views from my local desert observing location near San Diego, California, when the Pencil Nebula culminates at about 13° above my southern horizon.
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