Messier Object Marathon March 8-9, 2008
Cloudy skies blanketed the cosmos from view here in the Berkshires, but over at the Canary Islands, where Slooh.com houses its telescopes, the viewing was quite good for this year’s March 2008 Messier Marathon. Thank you Slooh!
The goal? Try to view as many astronomical objects as possible in one night. There’s 110 of them, a grand combination of nebula, star clusters and galaxies located across the entire sky. Some cannot be viewed because they are too low to the horizon — but on Slooh I was able to snap pics of 105 of them. Click on the photo if you’d like to see my results:
Over at Slooh they liked the collage — blogging my effort on their blog.
One of the coolest parts about using Slooh.com’s telescopes that night was a live broadcast interview with Don Machholz, one of the marathon’s founders. He explained that if nothing else, the marathon allows you to learn a great deal more about the night sky. Find out more about this kind of star marathon at SEDS. I’m looking forward to attempting a run with my own telescope, weather permitting!
Here’s an idea cooking up in the back of my mind: Messier Marathon Speed Painting Bonanza. Instead of taking photos, create a painted study of each object. You’d have to make each study in about 5 minutes, and actually faster, depending on how quickly you can move from telescope view to canvas.
I tried my own Photo Messier Marathon the other night. Since I was doing 225s images (15×15s stacked) I just ran out of time. I got the first 43 objects and then called it a night. I’m going to try to finish later this week.
So how much time did it take to do with the Slooh scopes?
Ed
March 11, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Thanks for asking. Total time for taking the pics was about 9+ hours, with many breaks included. I photoshopped many of the images right then and there while waiting for the next exposure. Usually they run four scopes at a time — two wide field and two high mag; many times the wide field images were much better, imho.
Can’t wait to try my own photo marathon w/ my own equipment. Your 43 objects is pretty darn good!!!! Nice thing w/Slooh is that with the time difference between here and there I wasn’t up all night.
vger
March 11, 2008 at 8:46 pm
“wide field images much better” – On M42, M31, M33, M44 in particular, wide fields look way, way better – they’re just too big to zoom in too much and even if they barely fit in the frame, it’s nice to have some space around them (no pun intended).
“I wasn’t up all night.” Boy – there’s something to be said for that.
Overall, a neat idea, particularly having more than one scope available. Did you have to book the time on Slooh, or were most of them already scheduled? I haven’t used Slooh, but have thought about doing the trial membership thing.
Ed
March 11, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Mostly already scheduled — very convenient.
vger
March 12, 2008 at 7:37 am
[...] for a table of most of them (actually taken in one night!) http://gregscheckler.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/messier-object-marathon-march-8-9-2008/ [...]
A starry starry night… « Vanishd!
March 28, 2009 at 8:52 am