Messiers a bust down south...

by Paul LeFevre

I had high expectations last Friday night...the weather looked good, I got off work early, and a gang was headed out to Little Blair Valley in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park for a Messier night. However, the curse of Messier Marathon Night rose up with a vengeance.

I arrived to find 20mph winds sustained, with gusts to 35mph or so. Shortly after pulling into my spot, clouds began to rise up from the south-west, and it just got worse from there. I had intended to finish off my imaging project of all of the Messier objects (I have 22 left), sort of a mini-imaging-marathon -- but every time I would point my scope somewhere and get ready to take a shot, clouds would move over my target and the wind would gust up. It just wasn't to be this night.

I would up doing a binocular Messier hunt with my two-week old Minolta 10x50 binoculars, poking through sucker holes in the gathering clouds, and did manage to see 56 Messiers with them over about 4 hours...most of the time hunkered down behind my car trying to block the very cold wind! I turned in about midnight, only to have an observing buddy wake me at 1:00 AM telling me it was starting to rain, and I'd better put my mount/scope away. A hurried pack up, and it was back to the sack until about 6:00 AM, when I awoke to find no rain, but plenty of cold (22 degrees). I packed up the rest of the way and drove home, passing through about a foot of snow in the 3800 foot pass between Little Blair and Palomar Mountain that had fallen during the night. An interesting night.

At least I did manage a quick image of comet Ikeya-Zhang early in the evening...

http://www.lefevre.darkhorizons.org/ccdimaging/pdlccd.htm

The image above doesn't do this comet justice. It was beautiful in the 10x50 binocs, with a huge long tail sweeping almost straight up from the western horizon, and showing signs of blue and yellow color even in binoculars. On Friday it seemed to be about magnitude 4.0, and was easily visible nekkid-eye near Venus and the crescent moon. Absolutely gorgeous.

So, let's see: out of 4 Messier Marathon attempts, I have:

1 "Messy Marathon" at Pacheco, where I managed 51 dew-soaked objects with a 6" dob after a rainstorm
1 GREAT night at Coe, where I got 107 with the 12.5" scope
1 night with sucker holes and clouds at Dino with the Dillons, where I managed 5 objects before the rain
1 night with sucker holes and clouds at Little Blair where I managed 56 binocular objects before the rain

1 for 4. Not very good odds. Can someone arrange to have all the Messiers visible in one night in June or July, please? March is killing me :)