A Perfect Photographic Messier Marathon! (Jonathan Ward, FRAS)

A Perfect Photographic Messier Marathon!

On my first attempt at imaging all of the Messier objects in one night, I was successful in acquiring images of all 110 of them between 8:21 pm EDT March 26 and 6:21 am March 27, 2019.

Each image is 3 to 4 minutes of integration time, either done as 10 second or 30 second unguided subs. My initial plan was to do 3 minutes per object, but after the first 20 I realized I could up that to 4 minutes and stay on schedule.

I couldn't see M74 in the subs as they downloaded to my laptop. Likewise, I was unable to see M30 as it rose through the trees only 4° above the horizon in the dawn. But when I got home, I clearly saw that I had captured both objects and completed a perfect marathon.

All images are cropped to the same scale, with the exception of M31, M42, M44, and M45, which are zoomed out by a factor of about 2.

I planned and executed this session myself - no scripts or sequences borrowed from anyone else. It was an incredible learning experience, and a real adrenaline rush.

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	2614259
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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