Messier Objects

Charles Messier - a comet hunter of the 18th century catalogued 110 objects that could be confused with comets. Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Messier .

I highly recommend a book on Charles Messier and the creation of this catalogue - Atlas of Messier Objects, 2008 by Ronald Stoyan.

Note: This gallery should be automatically sorted by Messier #.

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Messier M20 - NGC 6514 - Trifid Nebula and M21 - NGC6531 - Open Cluster in Sagittarius - 22/6/2012 (Processed cropped stack)

DeepSkyStacker 3.3.2 Stacked 85% of 17 Images ISO 800 120 Sec, 32 DARK, 0 BIAS, 33 FLATS, Post-processed by Photoshop CS5

I used this familiar object to compare results between 3 optical configurations - my 80mm APO refractor (22/6/2012) and borrowed Bintel 200mm f/4 (11/07/2012) and PowerNewt at native f/4 (13/7/2012).

Telescope - Apogee OrthoStar LOMO 80/480 with Hotech SCA Field Flattener, Hutech IDAS LPS-P2 filter, Canon 400D DSLR, Ambient 8C. Mount - Skywatcher NEQ6 Pro. Guidescope - Orion ShortTube 80 with Star Shoot Auto Guider.

messier m20 trifid nebula ngc ngc6514 m20 trifid nebula galactic nebula m21 open cluster ngc6531 m21 open cluster open cluster

From 2012 The Journey Continues