if you can call it a marathon of course- it's taken me since last July to get this far
well up to 25 Messier objects so far..out of 99 that one could reasonably hope to image from Sydney-so a quarter of the way through...a milestone therefore.

There are three albums in my photobucket account : Messier Objects/Caldwell Objects/ Other

http://s91.photobucket.com/albums/k282/n_mukkavilli/

so ho hum, these are pretty ordinary pictures

but wait ..it's with an ETX 70 !

anyone interested in astrophotography for the non- squillionaire-well here is what you can do with the near the very bottom of Meade's range.

course I can hear someone say, why bother?

I'm still working on an answer to that
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you don't need a stopwatch you need a calendar

Hey Seeker.

There is some great work going on here. Quite amazing. Your question is answer'ed very time someone like me says Wow you can really do that with an etx 70. Nice photos. If my math is right only 74 to go. Go get 'em.

Technically, no

The first Messier Marathon was accomplished in 1985 (Messier Marathon history), but people have been "collecting" the Messier catalog objects long before that. The full marathons can only be run at a certain time of the year.

Keep at it!

hi Seeker,

good to see here again (astronomy forum)
as I indicated, I like Your results! particulary ngc 256 and the M42!

best regards
Dietmar

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best regards,
Dietmar
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www.stargazer-observatory.com

LOL

actually need more than one calendar, 12 months isnt going to cut it!

Hi seeker372011 - I'm impressed! What type of camera and what type of setup are you using for doing this? Are you using any special mount, or only Meade's fork-mounted ETX70? And, any details as to how long the exposures were, etc. would be helpful. There's hope for me yet!

Keep posting, man...this is really encouraging!

Clear skies!

Paul

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Photons are free. Take some!

Thanks for your interest Paul

All these images were taken with an Orion DeepSpace Imager. I use a Minus Violet filter and an IR filter (the latter was supplied with the imager)

The ETX70 is in polar mode, for the most part mounted on a home made wedge. (very recently I bought an 884 tripod which makes me a bit more mobile)

Individual sub frames are invariably 30 seconds. I usually shoot at least 30 minutes of total exposure on each target; sometimes -eg for the Crab Nebula-twice that. I lose some sub frames due to tracking errors-wind, bumps, and so on. Sometimes I lose a lot, but usually most are good. I also reject frames-by inspection-where the quality is noticeably poorer than average. I might -depending on my luck-wind up between 20 to 50 good sub frames

I process-that is align and stack- in Maxim DL Essentials which came with the Orion Imager, and finish with Photoshop (Curves and Levels, unsharp masking,resizing) and Neat Image (noise removal)

The big step forward came when I decided to try the scope polar aligned

I do have problems with violet halos around bright stars which I try as best as I can to minimise in Photoshop

.. and that's pretty much it, really...nothing too sophisticated or ground breaking. Its an out of the box ETX70 , no special mods-and I see little reason why my results cannot be duplicated and indeed improved upon by anyone who cared to try.

give it a go!

Amazing that you are getting all those with the little ETX70. Definitely an impressive accomplishment!
I'm working on my own photographic Messier marathon. I have about 3 more to add to this, but you get the idea.
http://www.eastsideastro.org/observatory/messier.html

How deep can you go, star magnitude-wise?

Hi seeker372011 - one of the other members of this forum turned me onto Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools plug in for Photoshop (I use the CS version). One of the many macros this plug in has is to reduce blue halos around stars when shooting through an acromat telescope. I'm including 2 pictures here that I've taken - a before and after shot of The Pleiades. There are two different levels that this plug in has for blue halos: one is for large stars, the other for smaller stars. The process worked flawlessly for me, and I was very pleased with the results. It's a lot cheaper than buying an apochromat 'scope.

Noel Carboni's website is http://actions.home.att.net/Astronomy_Tools.html.

I did have a couple of other questions about your images. One was how dark is the location where you image from? The other was what type of laptop computer do you need to do this? I don't have a laptop now, and really didn't want to spend a bunch of money for something that is so easily stolen or damaged.

Thanks for your input! Keep at it!

Paul

Attached Images

	The-Pleiades-frame-web.jpg (114.3 KB, 11 views)
	The-Pleiades-web.jpg (58.6 KB, 10 views)

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Photons are free. Take some!

I am somewhat confused here.
I always thought that most of the stars in the Pleiades cluster HAVE blue halos around them. These are reflection nebulas and you are not supposed to remove them at all. Look at the following APOD: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060109.html
In other words, you guys, leave their blue halos alone!

Regards

Phil

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If at first you fail, you're running average

While much of the nebulosity in and around M45 is blue, I think the halos -not blue but violet really-are due to chromatic aberration caused by our achromats, and not true nebulosity.

Paul:

thanks for the link to Astronomy Tools!
the vast majority of my ETX images were taken from my light polluted backyard in suburban Sydney. Not as bad as some northern hemisphere cities I 've been to, but still very far from dark,

laptop-I use a no name Chinese made laptop-the cheapest I could buy two or three years ago.(i bought it specifically for imaging)

However I find that any more than 60 sub frames and my laptop struggles. So get the best spec you can afford..because I for example would dearly love to stack 120 or even 200 sub frames

ummm good question..don't really know..at least mag 13 maybe more.

I need to check

I have this plan to image 3C273 with my ETX 70, and if I do I will certainly post here

but I have imaged the Horsehead with this little scope from my light polluted backyard-an object which visually I failed to see clearly from a dark site with a 20 inch Obsession!

Indeed!

I like the organised way you have laid it all out

and ..marathon or not-at least you and I are taking the time to stop and smell the flowers along the way . These objects have been around a long while what's the hurry eh?

It's a messier mosey!

So, can you find pluto, in your images? 14 mag., two photos a day apart should do it.

Planets-eh? never thought about those thingies..might give it a whirl one of these nights

Planets ho!

Pluto is rising a few hours before the sun right now, in a corner of Sagittarius, so you may get some collateral messier action too. It'll get better over the next few month--and then from night to night, it'll move across the star images about an arcminute. It's not easy to see, but you're doing great work, and should have no problem.