Messier Marathon 2012

[Bob Vixie]

Doug, Dennis and I worked on the Messier Marathon Friday night, March 23, 2012. Linda came out and joined us, and drove home around 11. Doug’s wife Ai stayed the night with us. I got a call from Brian O the day before. He’s here from Michigan visiting his son and wanted to come out and join us.

I have friends that live south of Falcon in a bit of a valley, so much of the city light was blocked. We were still in the light dome, so it wasn’t as dark as I had hoped, but worked out OK.

We got there about 6 and set up. The tow-day old moon was very nice. Just a sliver with lots of Earth shine, Jupiter and Venus above.

I used my 12” Lightbridge for the marathon. I also had the Starmaster along just in case there was any trouble seeing something. Brian manned it, doing the marathon with his son and son’s GF. They used the go-to and breezed way ahead. They weren’t planning on doing the whole thing as they had plans the next day. Doug had a Tele Vue 102 refractor on a GEM using just the arrow keys and a red-dot finder. Dennis had his 12” dob along.

We started the hunt for M74, but it never got out of the twilight. We spent so much time looking for it, that we also missed 77 and almost missed Andromeda. I finally found Andromeda and could see the brighter companion. Doug could only get Andromeda itself. I started wondering if I could find anything manually as I had only found one object by 9:06.

Off to M33. Another phantom. OK, M34 then. Ah, success. It’s now 9:12. Off to M76, didn’t track it down until 9:24. What a slow start. I’ve found 4 of the first 8 objects and it’s 9:30 already. But the night is long and there’s lots ahead. And sure enough, they start rolling along.

Doug and I worked together, checking views. We both had the Year Round Messier Marathon book and kept in step. We found them at pretty much the same rate. Only once or twice did we not have the same object when we checked, but confirmed which was right and corrected the wrong scope.

After we had done the Virgo super cluster, we took a break and set our sights on Saturn. Brian had headed off to bed and Dennis was taking a nap also. Doug and I pumped up the power on his refractor and the Starmaster until we were in the mid-500s. Wow, was it nice. The Cassini division was sharp and clear. There was nice banding on the planet. Three close moons with Titan a ways off.
We also took a look at Mars, but not as impressive. We could make out the southern cap, but that was about it.

After about an hour we were back to the marathon picking up with M13 at 2:40. The rest of the list is slower as we had to wait for objects to rise. We calculated twilight beginning at 5:29. At 4:30 we had 7 objects left. M15 was pretty easy as there is a bright star just below it as it rises. M55 and M75 were much tougher as they were very low and way off the end of Sagittarius. Finally found them. M2 wasn’t too hard, but out in the middle of nowhere. M72 and M73 were hard as the globular is small and faint. And the other is a very small four- or five-star cluster, but at least it’s close.

So we just need to wait for M30. But it got way too bright before it even got above the horizon.

My final total was 105 of the 110. The book uses an alternate NGC for 102. Doug got 104 since he couldn’t see M110 in his scope. I didn’t get Dennis’s total. Brian got to about 70, he said.

All in all, it was a very nice night. Temps were warm, not a cloud in the sky, and the seeing above normal. There were several shooters during the night. Many of them moving quite slow. I remember one going east to west that covered probably 70 degrees or so.

Thanks to everyone that came out.

[Ginger]

Thanks for the report, Bob. You guys did good!!! I know from taking a
few months to find them all that it's not as easy as it might seem. I
wonder how many astro hours have been spent by people looking for the
Phantom, M74. I realized I would have to wait until it started coming up
in the morning twilight a few months later. By then I had all the rest
and then started the morning hunt for it but it was still maybe 2 or 3
weeks before I actually got it with my 10 inch Starmaster. I thought the
galaxies in Virgo were pretty hard too. Oh, you could see galaxies
alright but being sure each was the one I was trying to find was
challenging. Glad you all had a good night and could work together.
Thanks again for the report. Oh, yeah, keep track of your notes from the
marathon night and when you can pick up the rest you can get your
Messier Pin.

Ginger

On 3/25/2012 10:48 AM, Bob Vixie wrote:

My final total was 105 of the 110. The book uses an alternate NGC for 102. Doug got 104 since he couldn’t see M110 in his scope. I didn’t get Dennis’s total. Brian got to about 70, he said.

All in all, it was a very nice night. Temps were warm, not a cloud in the sky, and the seeing above normal. There were several shooters during the night. Many of them moving quite slow. I remember one going east to west that covered probably 70 degrees or so.

Thanks to everyone that came out.

------------------------
Bob Vixie

[doubt]

You know, I'm not sure I've ever seen M74, now that I think about it. I'm reasonably certain that I've never nabbed it during the marathon, though I don't remember the last couple of tries in that much detail, being a decade ago and all. And I've never bothered getting the pin or anything, so hard to say one way or the other.

Other than a couple nits (it's an NP-101, not a 102, and even with the "tower of power" -- 7mm Pentax XW + 2x Barlow + Bob's 2.5x PowerMate -- Saturn was "only" 386x power in the refractor), Bob's report is spot on. Conditions were great (warm, not too windy, just a bit early and late, perfectly clear skies with pretty good seeing), and apart from early frustration finding things through the Colorado Springs light dome, I don't think it could have gone any better.

I'd like to try this again sometime in a couple of years, maybe, get someplace a bit farther out and bit darker, then maybe I'd have a shot at 108 objects or so (I figure M74 and M30 are always going to be near hopeless this far north). But it was a good night regardless.