by Rob Hawley
Friday I took up both the 8" string scope and the 10" SCT. My game plan was use the 8" scope wherever possible and only rely on the 10" if I got stuck. It turned out the 10" was in sleep mode most of the evening.
Based on last Saturday's Coyote practice I was expecting to get 77, 31, and 32. The rest would be missed. That is pretty much what happened Friday. The three I saw from Coyote with the 10" were fairly easily to find with both scopes. I think I saw 33 in the 10". 74 and 110 were a definite miss.
It was actually fairly routine finding the rest of the evening objects. After the SJAA meeting I sat down with SkyMap Pro and put Rigel finder symbols on all of the objects and lines from the guide stars. This made finding the objects pretty easy. I used the paper list prepared by SJAA instead of the book since in one of the practice sessions I had turned two pages and missed all of the Cassiopeia objects. I did not wish to repeat that mistake.
It was clear from last Tuesday's practice that I needed to map out detailed instructions for the Virgo cluster. I found that if I took the time to consult the marathon book and then search for an object it took too long. So I put Rigel finder symbols on the two asterisms I was using for guides and put lines specifying the order and direction of the search. That provided useful since I finished the entire Virgo cluster Saturday morning in about 5 minutes.
I finished the main part of the marathon about midnight. The object order did not take the Coe horizon into account. I spend the next 3 hours picking off objects here and there on the list. About 3 AM the Sagittarius area was high enough in the sky to get back to serious work. I was done with all of these objects by about 4 AM.
At that point all of the 7 remaining objects were on the horizon from the east to southeast. It was a waiting game to see if they could get high enough in the sky so I could star hop to them. 55, 72, and 73 ended up only being seen by the SCT. I tried to find them with the 8" but was not able to. M30 came up after twilight. The SCT zoomed to it, but all I saw was daylight - not even stars.
It does pay to take some time to verify the objects before moving on. In at least one case I almost logged an object, but a check revealed that I was on a nearby similar object.
Will I do it again? Probably not. Aside from it appealing to the Type A portion of my personality, it seemed a shame to not spend the time on 81/82, 51, and 104. Each was about the best I have ever seen them. During the next dark cycle I plan to spend the entire night on the Virgo cluster.
Was the marathon a useful experience? I think so. I learned a lot about how to star hop efficiently and the value of being prepared. I probably should have better anticipated the problem with the early morning objects. So overall I am glad I did it - once.
It sounds from Mark's report like Saturday was not a complete bust. I was a little concerned when I looked at the sky Saturday evening. Friday was great weather, except for the early morning winds.
Everyone was fairly well behaved with lights on Friday night.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Sun Mar 21 17:39:08 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Thu Jul 8 17:47:37 2004 PT