LSA

Fun and Frustration on a Messier Marathon

LSA was well worth the Saturday afternoon drive!

Driving south along Highway 101, the further south I progressed, the better the sky conditions. I was feeling pretty optimistic about the viewing conditions for LSA, especially when the staff member at the entrance to the park confirmed the rumor that the wet stuff should stay primarily to the north of us. My daughter, Jenny, and I arrived at the overflow lot around 4:15pm, the sky 75% clear, with clouds mainly to the north, but with a bit of high stuff starting to move in from the west.

I set up my 14.5" Starmaster, joined by Bob Armstrong (20" Obsession), Guillermo (18" Obsession), and a gent by the name of Peter with his new 8" Orion XT8. As the sun was setting, more and more moisture started moving into the area, confirmed not just by visible cloud cover, but also by the thermometers/hygrometers both Guillermo and I has with us. As the stars started showing themselves, the sky was about 70% clouded over, some at haze-level, some behind very dark stuff. Well, so much for my Messier Marathon ... or so I thought. With both M74 and M77 buried in a layer of western muck, I turned my 'scope to view the likes of Jupiter and then M42. The equatorial bands of Jupiter were surprisingly clear, as were the E & F stars of Orion's Trapezium. Guillermo cranked up the magnification on his 18", and we all shared views of a *very* steady Trap, with pinpoint stars. 20-minutes later, the sky was probably 70% clear! How quickly conditions could change - a sign of things to come later. But for the moment, we all commented on just how great the skies were looking! :)

Okay, M74 & M77 were still out of reach, still buried in a small cloud band to the W-SW. Andromeda, just a bit further north, was in the clear, and I soon had M31, M32, and M110 logged, although M110 wasn't nearly as easy this weekend as it was last Saturday and Dino Point. The only other early-evening challenge was M33, but the Pinwheel was definitely there for viewing, even if the view was unimpressive. I could tell Peter wasn't impressed with its view through my 'scope - but just wait until Fall, Peter! :)

So I was off and running on an abbreviated Marathon. (Okay, I'll admit I never expected to hit M74 anyway. ) For most of the evening I used a 17mm T4 Nagler with a Paracorr (107x w/ 46-minute field), but switched now and then to a 12mm T4 for slightly higher magnification (152x). I was using Harvard Pennington's The Year-Round Messier Marathon Field Guide, a wonderful book, as my MM coordinator. The star charts are invaluable; we even used 'em to nail down M79 in Lepus in Bob's 20", just before M79 hit the horizon. Pretty funny to see a 20" 'scope waaaay over like that!

Clouds came and went during the evening, but generally in passing bands, while dew was a constant nuisance. Kept the paper towels handy for the constant wiping of my Telrad, but my eyepiece and secondary stayed clear for the first half of my Marathon session. Probably the highlight of the early evening for me was the view of M51 in Guillermo's 18". Just a beautiful sight. My favorite Starmaster view of the evening was of M46, the open cluster in Puppis with the foreground planetary. Around 10:00pm the sky was a real mess again, probably 75% clouded over, with a haze of high thin stuff virtually everywhere. Io was transiting Jupiter, and I was hoping to catch the start of its shadow transit, but there was no chance of finding ol' Jove in the western sky. Didn't really matter too much, however, as by this time I was deeply involved with the M-objects in Virgo. Yes, I got lost twice , and had to backtrack to M58 to get my bearings. All part of the fun ... right? :) I finally nailed down M100 about 11:15pm, and then decided to take a nap for a couple of hours, waiting for Hercules and Lyra to get into position ... and hoping the sky would clear.

By the way, a group of students and a teacher from Gonzales had shown up earlier in the evening, armed with 'scopes (and white flashlights!), looking for the ubiquitous Jamie Dillon . They were actually a wonderful group, and Peter assisted them with various astronomical endeavors. ("Atta boy, Peter!")

I crawled into my sleeping bag at 11:30pm, expecting to wake up at 1:00am or so. Well, panic set in when I actually woke up just before 3:00am ... to a perfectly clear sky! Rushed to get dressed, and then faced a dewed-over primary and secondary. Well, out came the battery and hair-dryer, and 20-minutes later I was set to go ... but waaaay behind schedule. The battle with dew and my secondary & eyepiece continued for the next two hours. To make a long story *somewhat* shorter , at 5:00am the still-clear sky was just too bright to continue, and I ended The Hunt, having missed M30, M72, M73 and M75 in the early morning light. M15 and M2 were my last two hits. I used NGC 5866 (Draco) as my M102-alternate, so out of 110 M-objects sought, I nailed down 104.

I crawled back into my sleeping bag at 5:10am, and woke at 6:30am to a completely clouded sky. Well, I knew that meant I could go back to sleep for a bit, and caught a couple more hours of zzzzzz's. When Jenny and I finally emerged from the van about 9:00am, Peter was still around, and informed me that it had actually rained for a bit around 12:30am.

Quite a night!