by Bob Jardine
Richard Navarrete wrote:
Did anyone complete a Messier Marathon last night?
Glad to hear you had a nice night, Richard.
My marathon attempt was aborted due to a combination of minor equipment failure and the fact that the skies (at FP) were totally yucky (that's a technical term) for the first hour or more. No chance at all of seeing the first 7 or 8 objects before they set.
I'm glad I stuck it out, however, as the skies turned quite nice by 10:00. The limiting mag was only around 5.8 or so, but the seeing was as good as I can remember; I cranked the TV NP101 up to 540 power on Porrima and got a very nice, stable image of two disks just touching. Peter McKone used something like 800 power on it (in a 15"), and had a clean split.
The highlight for me was seeing Vesta with the nekked eye.
Lots of good folks there too...big fun, as DDK would say (and probably will).