It’s been a long-time goal of mine to do a Messier Marathon. I missed my window of opportunity again this year, and the reality is that the time investment required during the month of March is probably not realistic for me in the coming few years.

So I’ve decided that instead I’m going to try to photograph the Messier Catalog over the next year — it’s like a marathon, only stretched out to 12 months.

I’ve already started, although not by intention, with the following:

• M42 and M43 on March 21, 2014.
• M81 and M82 on April 9, 2014.
• M51 on April 16, 2014.

Clearly I need to step up the pace a little bit. It’s not every object that will put a second one in the same frame, after all. But it will be nice because there are still quite a few I’ve never taken the time to actually look at.

I will be trying to use Tony Cecce’s Twelve Month Tour as a guideline, with modifications because of the tall trees that get in the way of some of them.

Watch this space (the puns!) for updates!