by Nilesh Shah
I had about 40 Messiers left to be found before last Friday and after reading that Mimi finished with her list and Jamie had only 20 odd left, I promised myself to try finishing it fast. Knowing that next week my wife will be arriving from India, I knew this weekend was the best time for me to attempt it.
There were about 25 of Virgo-Coma and Uma galaxies and about 15 objects from Saggitarius and Scorpius. Also since I never browsed through Virgo-Coma region before, I knew it would be real tough to get even near to completing the marathon on Saturday. The plan called for completing remaining Messiers from Virgo-Coma and Uma on Friday and also get used to the Virgo-Coma region. I left at about 5 p.m only to find 101 awfully slow. Normally it takes me about an hour to reach Coe, but on Friday it tooke me more than 2 hours. But I was there just when it was getting dark only to find it too windy. This was also the first night I was going to try my new setup of using TheSky on my laptop running on newly purchased 33 Amp-hour gel filled deep cycle battery through an inverter. After the wind slowed a bit(may be it was satisfied a bit after knocking off Mark Wagner's and my telescopes off their bases), I started observing using Alfani(the 6" f8 PLD) and 20 mm Meade Research Grade Erfle that I borrowed from Mark W.
After observing Messier galaxies in Leo, I went to Virgo-Coma region. I was so pleased to match the star field I was observing in my eyepiece to the star fied I could see on my laptop screen running TheSky. I also found it useful to move from one star field to another using the TheSky. After matching the star field, I would zoom out and take a note of direction I have to move for my target. Then I would zoom in again to the eyepiece view and "hop" the field in the direction of the target, matching the view in the ep with the view on the screen. I logged all the messiers a lot of faint NGC galaxies that came in my view. It was very satisfying to find 54 objects in that condition. I left at about 1:30 when my battery went dead.
On Saturday, I reached Coe at about 4 p.m. Ken, Richard, Jim Bartolini and Paul were already there. I setup Alfani next to Paul Lefevre. I was observing with 26 mm Plossl at @40x. I missed 8 objects in the twilight. I got all confused, couldn't identify constellations properly. It was very disappointing and a very bad start for the marathon. But I decided not to loose hope and still continue. I knew a couple of successful find will get me into the mood. So I went after M42, M43, M44 - all easy targets. After that point it wasn't difficult. I was trying to catch up with Paul and managed to come pretty close in a short time. By 11:30, we were done with close to 60 objects. My previous night's visit of Virgo-Coma region proved extremely useful as I had no difficulty browsing through it. I even managed to come at par with Paul Lefevre in the search sequence. Our sequences were little different though, as I was following Don Machholz and he was following Ed Ting sequence. I took a nap for about an hour or so before starting the hunt in Oph, Sco. When the lasr 5 difficult objects remained, I had 98 on my list. I knew the remaining 5 will be diffucult, and I wanted just two to complete 100. When Paul said M15 and M2 can be found, I started to look for it and found 'em. I had some tough time getting M72 and M73, but got them eventually. The last one was - M30 and as Paul mentioned in his post, we got that one too.
I had 102 out of 110. Although it wasn't the best, for me it was very satisying as I not only got my highest count of objects in one night, I also completed my Messier list. I felt very fresh and happy as the day dawned. It was a great night with a great company. Although Jamie wasn't doing marathon, he was a great company. I look forward to the next marathon with Paul Lefevre. I'll sure do better next time.
Now onto the Herschell 400......