August 29th, 2008 MAS Messier Marathon @ LLCC

MAS fall Messier Marathons were hosted at both the Cherry Grove Observatory and Long Lake Conservation Center.  I headed to the one at LLCC located near McGregor, MN some of the darkest sky’s short of the BWCA.

I don’t know what the final count was but, it was under 10 at LLCC, the one at Cherry Grove typically runs about 30.  I arrived late and setup a 10″ dob.  A nice collection of telescopes had already been setup including the MAS’s 30″ Obsession (they no longer make a 30″, we got one of the last ones ever produced) housed at the LLCC, amazing scope, impressive views of deep space objects.  It’s an f4.5 with a 30″ mirror (that’s almost a 1 meter telescope), it requires a fairly tall ladder to views objects in it.  The skys under LLCC were fantastic, the first thing I did was collimated my dob and noticed my laser collimator needs collumation as you twist it the laser moves, oh well, I could’nt do it in the dark in the field.  First object I looked at having adjusted my night vision was Saturn blowing my night vision low on the Southern Horizon, the proceeded on to check out a dozen or so Messier’s in Sagittarius, then went on from their, checking out a half dozen more easy to find M’s, and checking out the Obsession occasionally.  I then whipped out a small equitorial mount and shot some DSLR stills, I shot 30 or so frames with seperate dark frames for later processing.  The dew rolled in quick, I packed up, everything is almost dry as I type this, so I called it early before the rise of Orion grabbing a bunk and returning for the cities around 8am.  Here’s a couple un-processed raw frames from last evening.

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