Nice to see the Trapezium and the Fish Mouth so clearly here, Carlton
M42 is so big that images showing the whole thing leave these burned out, or too small in scale to see. The Fish Mouth, that is the name of the dark pillar that points towards the Trapezium, has lots of subtle details. It is not a flat structure, but very much 3D and it does show its overall cylindrical shape and shading.
The Fish Mouth is also the easiest dark pillar to see, visible even in 2" aperture
very easily! What a lot of people also don't know about dark pillars is they hide dozens of protostars deep within them! These are stars that are still forming and on the brink of kicking off their nuclear fires. It is the gravity of these protostars that holds this "dark" gas and dust tight around them, resisting the erosive power of the radiation blasting out of the surrounding active stars, in this case the cluster that forms the Trapezium. Once these protostars kick of their nuclear fires, M42 will look VERY different from what it does now! After M42, the next set of dark pillars that are easiest of see are those in Eta Carina, but these are smaller in size and require more aperture to spot. A dark sky helps, but I've seen them with an 8" scope here in Sydney.
Understand what you are looking at, and all of a sudden you begin to see "more"!
Alex.
