Messier Marathon (Simon Wilson)

Messier Marathon

The night of 6/4/20 was clear but with a 98% illuminated moon. With no obvious narrowband targets to go at, I attempted something a little different.

This image represents my effort to image as many of the Messier objects over the course of one night from my location in Bakewell, Derbyshire, England @ 53 degrees N. I managed a total of 90 (including ‘M51b’ and ‘M109b’).

I used Sequence Generator Pro to create a sequence, based upon the objects position in the sky at various points through the night (I am lucky enough to be able to image from my balcony which has excellent sky visibility from the NE to the W, and northwards to the altitude of Polaris).

All images were taken with my Atik 460ex mono attached to a Skywatcher MN190 using a Baader Luminance filter. Exposure lengths ranged from 5 seconds to 120 seconds depending on the target / proximity to the Moon and binned 2x2. Originally, I had hoped that SGP would handle the sequence automatically, but when I was confronted with a new error message and several early software crashes, I decided I needed to 'babysit' the process through the night.

Minimal post processing was done on each image in Photoshop to include levels and curves adjustments, gradient removal using Gradient Exterminator and noise reduction using Topaz Denoise. Each image was cropped / resized to 400px by 320px. Finally the processed images were assembled on a large blank canvas in PS.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, spanning 3 days in the planning, execution and processing phases. I hope you enjoy.

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	5356774
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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