Well, once again Mother Nature has thwarted another attempt by me to complete a full photographic marathon.  Actually, this time she had help.  I had started to test my equipment on Thursday night and everything was working so well that I actually had 50 Messier objects photographed by midnight.  However, I had an important client teleconference in the morning, so I decided that work needed to get done (solely to support my telescope habit) and stopped.  Looking back now, I should have stayed up all night, done the marathon and teleconference, then slept the rest of the day.  Alas, the clouds came rolling in and wiped out the seeing for the weekend.  I will try again next year.  I will process some of my images that I did manage to take and post them in the next few days.  The featured image was taken by Daniel Perry an RAS member.  You can check out more of his outstanding photos at http://www.californiastars.net.

– Ex astris, scientia –