Hello
TSS colleagues. I've now participated in 4 different
Messier Marathons. Nothing has quite compared with the excitement of the first experience, March 20-21, 2021, starting at 5pm ET on the 20th and running through 8 am ET on the 21st. There were eight team members: Roel Boudry, Robert Chandler, Jeffrey Horn, Sanjeev Joshi, Doug Lucas, Frank Rossetti, Gary Shaw, and Phil Wolski. We kept a spreadsheet of our progress and worked together as a team throughout the night. Here's our report (attached).
Here are a couple of our images, grabbed
EAA-style:
- M62-2021-0921-MM.jpg (16.05 KiB) Viewed 901 times
We also captured the entire experience as a video (live stream). Here's an edited 30-minute version of the 14-hours of raw footage:
https://youtu.be/xRoRTQdMXVI?si=pMkgiKomOCbYNxr2
We repeated our efforts in 2022, by the way, and again, just *barely* captured all 110 objects.
Last year (2023), I tackled the marathon from my new observatory location with a friend and - from the site of the observatory, we aren't able to capture M30 in the Marathon format. We knew this in advance but accepted it as an unfortunate side effect of an otherwise great location. But we *WERE* able to capture 109 objects through just my RASA 11 in the observatory.
This year (2024), in my first attempt, we managed 60 objects before a pea-soup-thick fog rolled in and covered the entire night sky. I'm hoping to try again on the next clear available night.
So the best report would be the first one, for multiple reasons. : )
EAA Observing from the outskirts of Louisville, Kentucky, USA
Telescope: Celestron RASA 11 - Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Software: AstroPlanner (with occasional help from SkyTools 4 Pro), Stellarium, SharpCap and Nina (the latter purely for autofocusing).
YouTube 'EmeraldHillsSkies'
https://www.youtube.com/@EmeraldHillsSkies