Yeah, that's one of the biggest disappointments newcomers to amateur astronomy have when they compare photographs like that to almost most astronomical objects. Turns alot of people off.
It's like promoting the very partial lunar eclipse eclipse this weekend. It's so shallow even people aware it's happening won't be able to notice anything.
Yeh, I may still sit out and watch some...depending on the weather.
I have seen near photo views through my scope when the air is still. And, if you use my buddy’s 22 Obsession, you really do get some good views.
A few years ago, I got to have an observing session with Al Nagler. While we were looking around, he pulled out a little device he had been helping to work on.
Monocular low light device, white light (not green like many others),and it could be attached to the 22in scope. We looked at M8 everyone that looked through the scope spent a good bit of scope time just trying to find the edge of the nebula. They were near photographic views. If you just pointed it at the sky, you could see all kinds of gas clouds in the Milky Way, that you couldn’t see in your scope. Putting an OIII filter made it even better.