Messier Marathon 2004 edition

by Craig Colvin

I took my Orion XT10 and my newly constructed 8" string scope with me, and got setup just before sunset. At last year's marathon I had observed 106 M's and I was hoping to do better this year. So even before twilight occured I along with several others started looking for the first couple Messier objects. I first went after M77 and star hopped my way from Venus down to the field where it should be, it took a while but at 7:23 I finally saw it. It was faint and very washed out but plainly visible. I was thinking I was off to a great start as I then hopped over to M74, but M74 proved to be elusive. Although I could verify by the stars in my eyepiece that I was looking right at M74, it was not visible. I tired increasing power, used my ultra block filter, but no joy. According to my logs I spent roughly 20 minutes searching for M74 before giving up and moving on to M33. M33 also proved elusive but after increasing magnification and using the ultra block filter once again to improve contrast I was able to make it out using averted vision. So having gotten 2 of 3 first tough objects out of the way I was thinking I was home free. Jumped over to M31 feeling confident and ticked off M31 and M32, but was unable to find M110. I tried all the tricks I knew and imagined that I saw it, but in the end I could not convince myself it wasn't my imagination. So 4 out of the first 6 and I thinking this was going to be tougher than I thought. But from then on it was smooth sailing. I ticked off M's throughout the rest of the night, no real challenges, finally coming to M30. M30 was scheduled to rise after twilight ended, so I was expecting it to be tough. As the time approached I realized a truck was right in my way so I moved my XT10 so I would have a clear shot at the horizon. I kept my scope on the horizon, right where M30 should rise and tried to catch it's rise, but the sky was so light by then that I had no luck. So that ended my marathon. Final tally 107 objects, one better than the year before.

A couple of highlights and observations.

• My new 8" string scope worked great. On a lot of the M's I would first find it in the 10" and then move over to the 8" and try it there as well to compare the views. I did this so much that at once point Mark Berger asked if I was doing 2 marathons. I still need to work out some balance issues with the scope but it's quite usable as is.

• I saw a lot of Messier objects that I had not seen since last year's marathon and some were quite nice looking. I have a tendency to go back to the same ones every time I go out observing, M31, M42, M13, M57, etc and negelect some of the others in the area that are just as interesting, so I've decided that I'm going to expand my repertoire and explore some of the others when I'm out observing.

• Around 2:45am I observed for the time NGC5139, Omega Centari, as it rose above the southern horizon. It really makes me want to plan a trip further south.

• Mark Berger showed me my first quasar, 3C273. It is one the brightest and one of the nearest of the quasars.

The weather was great, it was warm most of the night, until around 3am when the wind picked up, even then it was a remarkably warm wind. The sky was very nice, a slight haze developed along the horizon in the early morning, but it wasn't that bad. The few times I payed attention the seeing was also great with 5 stars in the trapezium clearly visible and even low power and I caught the 6th occasionally.

Once again a great night of observing and a very successful Messier Marathon.

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Posted on sf-bay-tac Sat Mar 20 16:43:06 2004 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.0 Thu Jul 8 17:31:03 2004 PT