Observing Sat. Night

by Rich Neuschaefer


I got 103 Messier objects. With the high thin clouds in the west I thought several of the early objects were not going to be possible, so, when a Troop of Boy Scouts came by I showed them M42 and M45. I did the same for several other visitors. I missed M74, M77, M33, M31, M32, M110 at sunset.

After the visitors thinned out I started going after Messier objects where the clouds weren't so bad. The darker skies also helped. With the late date of the marathon and relatively cloud free morning skies, the only other Messier object I missed was M30.

The hardware worked very well. I was using an AP 155mm f/7 APO with 7.5x50 correct viewing finder, Telrad on a 900 mount. It's a very easy to star hop using the two finders and a 27mm Panoptic.

There were a lot people with scopes attending the TAC Messier Marathon this year. It looked like over 40 scopes. It was a fun night.