Coe on St Patrick's day (brief)

by Jay Reynolds Freeman

I went to the Messier Marathon / Star Party at Henry Coe State Park on Saturday, March 17, 2007. When I arrived, in mid twilight, the outer lot was fairly full, with cars parked around nearly all the periphery; I would say there were perhaps 40 cars in all.

There were a wide variety of telescopes present, but I did not notice any real Big Iron. The early-evening weather was breezy enough that many Dobsons would have had a problem with the wind. I got a look through a 150 mm f/5 doublet achromat that was showing a nice view of M42/43. The owner said that the chromatic aberration became objectionable above about 150x.

It was clear, but I have seen this site darker. Landing lights from aircraft passing over the hills while descending toward San Jose Airport showed plenty of scatter in their beams. A trace of fog developed in the valley as the evening wore on. The wind dropped a bit and temperatures seemed to climb, but when I left, at about 10:30, it was still chilly.

I only brought my 14x70 binocular -- a superb instrument for Messier observing. I did not plan to do a full Marathon -- I never have done so. But to get into the spirit of things I started chasing Messier objects at dusk and had found all of them from M52 eastward through and including M68, M104, M53, M3 and M101 by the time I left, except for M40, which I forgot. (I checked it out from home later in the evening.) That's sixty-four Messier objects in about two hours of actual observing, plus a few extras in passing, like the double cluster.

All the Messier objects are easy for me in a 14x70 in good conditions. The only problems I had in the night's observing were with faint fuzzies in the sunset and city lights at twilight. I got one good look at M74, and also spotted M110 and M83 somewhat more easily.

-- Jay Reynolds Freeman