It was fun doing the Messier marathon with a smallish scope. With my A-P 130mm f/8 EDT refractor it was much easier than I thought even with the not so bright objects on the list. In the early evening glow I missed M74 and found M110 and M33 quite difficult, although M33 was easy in 9x63 binoculars. The other misses were in the dawn, M2, M72, M73 and M30. Actually I forgot to try M2 because I was working so hard to find M72 and M73. My total was 105 Messier objects for the night. There were bands of high, thin clouds moving across the sky in the early evening and morning and most likely much of the night too.

I used a Telrad finder and an 8x50 correct viewing finder on the 130 EDT. Many of the objects I could find with just the Telrad and a 26mm plossl in the main scope. I started with a 32mm plossl but found using a 26mm 26mm made seeing the objcts a little easier (40x).

The 130mm EDT showed detail in a number of the Messier objects. It resolved the brighter of the globular clusters into "countless" fine points of light. Several of the galaxies and brighter emission nebulae were very interesting.

Don Machholz's book Messier Marathon Observer's Guide Handbook and Atlas was very easy to use. I just followed it page by page and checked off the objects, once or twice I found it easier to jump ahead to another page and come back and finish the earlier page. The charts in Don's book are super.

Comet Hale-Bopp was a very pleasant distraction from the marathon. We got a to see H-B in the evening and again and much better in the morning (Mar 9th). With the 130mm scope and about 80x it was easy to see two or three arcs of light infront of the false nucleas but a little to one side. There was a large split in the comets tail. H-B was very easy to see it was obviously brighter than Deneb.

Rich