The crab nebula

Much has been written and discussed about this object. Although it appears faint and featureless in a small scope it is a popular and frequently observed target. The view of M1 improves a lot when increasing the aperture from 8 to 12.5 inches, and still further up to 18 inches. But even with 18 inces of aperture I can so far not claim to have seen the filaments of this nebula. Possibly it is possible to imagine seeing something with averted vision even in a 12.5-inch.
I observing guides detection of the filaments is claimed to be possible with a scope in the 10 - 12-inch range, but I find this a bit optimistic. Are there anyone out there who have really seen the filaments? What aperture was used? Do filters help?
In fact we observed M1 with the 18-inch during our last session, but for some reason we didn't think about filters (having both UHC and O-III available). The nebula was large, bright and impressive, but if any filaments could be seen, they were very faint and unconspicuous.

Inge S

Inge,

I've never seen them and I've observed M1 many times with apertures of 20 inches and larger with and without filtration.

Dave Mitsky

I recently got to observe M1 in very dark skies and structure was noticeable in a 12". At low power (50X) it's just a bright oval; at 100x I could see some feathering of the edge and the central portion gets "lumpy". With an Orion Ultrablock and averted vision the lumps became very faint bubbles, revealing the filaments. Now, this was a REAL subtle effect and I had to return to it several times to make sure it wasn't just my eyes making stuff up. Upping the magnification to 170x didn't make any improvement; but bumping the scope did confirm that I was seeing some structure.