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Imaging Messier Marathon 2021, Molly Wakeling

Imaging Messier Marathon 2021

Imaging Messier Marathon 2021, Molly Wakeling

Imaging Messier Marathon 2021

Description

The fruit of my labors -- my first Astrophotography Messier Marathon!

I thought it would be fun to tackle this unique project. Usually, the Messier Marathon is done visually over one night, but I've instead done an imaging version, taking a single image per target. Due to sky conditions and the sheer number of targets (even split up between two telescope rigs!), it ended up taking me a week, and I still didn't get everything. But I did manage to get 66 of the 100 targets that were visible to me, out of the 110 Messier objects total (some were blocked by all of the obstructions around my yard), which was exciting! I will definitely try again in the future!

I divided the workload between my Celestron C8 telescope with a monochrome camera and my Takahashi FSQ-106N telescope with a color camera. Each image is a single frame -- that is, one one-shot-color image, or one red, green, and blue image combined to a single image. Each frame was 60s exposure time. I didn't go any calibration with darks or flats for the sake of my sanity! Or any other cleanup beyond background extraction and color calibration.

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