I began this quest to image all 110 Messier Objects with the same camera (Canon T3i/600D) and telescope (Orion ED80 f/7.5) over three years ago. Like many astrophotographers my first deep sky image was that of M42 - the Orion Nebula. The image was only a 7-second shot but it was good enough to see the nebulosity and I subsequently re-imaged it for the catalog. I am currently creating a collage with all of my images and will post once it is complete.
Link to my current images of Messier Objects:
https://kurtzeppetello.smugmug.com/Messier-Objects/It took a while to get this object because it was one the twenty five objects that was not visible from my yard. My intent was to image this object on one of our regular meeting nights at Boothe Park, however, the season was getting closer to end an ideal night was going away. Last Friday (2/2/18) was a good visual night but it was extremely cold with 20 mph gusts. Also, Boothe Park has lots of light pollution (Bortle 7, maybe 8) and the moon was out, although it was low. I had to limit exposures to only 30 seconds. Special thanks goes to Mark Holden, President of Boothe Memorial Astronomical Society, for braving the conditions with me.
M79 (NGC 1904) is a globular cluster in the constellation Lepus and is at a distance of about 42,000 light years away from Earth and 60,000 light years away from the Galactic Center (source: wikipedia). M7 looks pretty small in my little refractor but larger scopes can resolve individual stars. Also, this globular cluster is thought to be a captured cluster from a close encounter with another galaxy.
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