“work fast”? I think you guys have me confused with someone who knows what
they’re doing! :-) If I can find Polaris and one target Friday night, I’ll
consider that a resounding success!
At last fall’s AASP, it took over two hours to find Polaris with my PoleMaster!
I could see Polaris, this time!, but I couldn’t get the mount to point to it.
Where I thought it was pointing and where it actually was were two different
things! And then I couldn’t find Mars to do a Solar System alignment on my AVX
mount. At which point I gave up in frustration (my astro laptop also drained
its battery on the trip out so it was dead too!) and went back to using my
Canon on the StarAdventurer shooting the Plaeides.
So Friday night, locust permitting, I’ll aim for either the Crab Nebula or NGC
2903. On Saturday night, since it is the Messier Marathon, I’ll aim for M60 or
M90 once they’re clear of the Phoenix light dome.
Mike McDonald
mikemac@xxxxxxxxxxx
On Mar 14, 2019, at 12:12 PM, Paul Lind <pulind@xxxxx> wrote:
Rick and Michael,
I agree. Some of us have done the imaging marathon and it can be fun and
crazy. Getting an image takes a few seconds longer than just eyeballing the
object, so you need to work fast. One method is to automate the whole thing
by programming the entire sequence into your go-to mount. Howard Anderson
did this and perhaps he can elaborate. I believe the first time it worked
great until it started missing objects when he wasn't looking. It's not good
to notice this after the objects have set!! We all know that when computers
are in control nothing can go wrong --- go wrong --go wrong.... I've heard
you are a software person. You might try something like this.
Paul Lind
----- Original Message -----
From: Rick Tejera <SaguaroAstro@xxxxxxx>
To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wed, 13 Mar 2019 23:19:55 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [AZ-Observing] Re: All Arizona Messier Marathon: target
recommendations?
Michael,
I meant to answer this earlier but a bout of Pneumonia has kept me
incommunicado for the last week. Rathe than trying to image just a few
Messiers, why not try for them all? See the AAMM page on the SAC website for
the detail of the Imaging marathon. Basically the same as for a visual
marathon, except you need to see the object on your screen. Like the visual
marathon which doesn't require detailed notes, the imaging marathon doesn’t
require pristine processing, just see the object. I hope you'll consider
adding you name to the ranks of imaging marathoners
Rick Tejera (K7TEJ)
