Dr Bob's Messier 50yd dash

http://www.orfe.princeton.edu/~rvdb/images/Messier50mDash/

quoting from Dr. Bob Vanderbei

----
      From:  Robert Vanderbei <rvdb@No-Spam> 
      Date:  Sun Mar 20, 2005  9:07 am 
      Subject:  A new challenge---the Messier 50m dash (with photofinish).
     
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      In the good old days (whenever that was), the Messier marathon was a
      test of ones
      star hopping ability together with a bit of shear endurance and luck.
      With the advent of GoTo telescopes, some of the rational for a Messier
      marathon
      has disappeared.
      Yet, these things are still fun but maybe it's time to think of a
      different challenge.
      So, I propose a "Messier 50m Dash": locate and identify 50 Messier
      objects as
      quickly as you can using whatever tools you like (goto is fine). To
      make it even
      more fun (at least for those of us into imaging), how about taking a
      picture of each
      one! As a proof of concept, I did this this past Friday evening. The
      gallery of images
      is posted here:
      http://www.orfe.princeton.edu/~rvdb/images/Messier50mDash/
      Actually, I was originally
      planning to take pictures of about half the Messier objects before 10pm,
      then grab about
      5 hours of sleep (since I had to be awake for an all-day meeting on
      Saturday),
      and grab the remaining ones before dawn to do a complete digital
      Messier marathon. But, luck wasn't on
      my side. The evening turned out to be rather murky.
      By the time I got to M3 a little bit after 9pm, the scope was pointed
      well to the east (the direction of NYC), the next several in the usual
      Messier-marathon
      ordered list were galaxies, and the galaxies I'd already imaged were
      rather pathetic
      because of the murk and the quarter moon. So, I stopped to grab some zzz's.
      When I awoke at 3am, it was cloudy out. There was no chance to finish a
      marathon. In the end I'd
      taken images of 48 objects. All the galaxies linger on the edge of
      detection. But, the star clusters came
      out rather well. The images were taken binned 3x3. Most are single 10
      second images
      (since the sky glow accounted for about 20000 counts in that time). For
      M42 I popped in
      an Halpha filter and took a one minute exposure. For M45 I popped in a
      blue filter to try
      to bring out some of the nebulosity. In all other cases, I just used a
      clear parfocal filter. I
      refocused a number of times as the temperature was dropping rapidly.
      For those of you who, like me, strive for deep, high S/N, images these
      images will seem rather
      awful. But the fun of it is being organized well enough to do this
      quickly. 48 images in 2 hours
      and 8 minutes isn't bad, I suspect. Next time I'll make sure I get at
      least 50.
      -- Bob
      Robert J. Vanderbei
      http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb