Date: Sun, 02 Apr 2006 13:13:50 -0700 From: AJ Crayon 2006 ALL ARIZONA MESSIER MARATHON Despite the quiet cloudy weather there was an excellent turnout of marathoners, observers and folks just wanting to get out of the city. As it turned out the clouds provided marathoners with an additional challenge by altering the suggested viewing sequence. Despite my absence, because of work, both Jack Jones and Rick Tejera filled in admirably, thanks ya'll. Jack with T-shirt sales and collecting the observing lists and Rick with the sunset pep talk. For this article I'm taking information from e-mail postings and hope this will help cover the salient topics. Out thank go out, again, for Ray Farnsworth and Jet Ray farms for permitting use and access of the site. And a great crowd upwards to 150 people and 100 vehicles (I like that number) For the observing there were 10 that qualified for the first three places and a telescope plate, see the results table elsewhere. Of all objects missed, M74 was missed by all but one observer, Gilbert A. Esquerdo who found 105. Tom Polakis, also with 105, posted the following analysis for those with 100 or more objects. "All 24 people who saw 100 or more, Messier objects missed M110. Ten of those 24 were able to spot M31, and 5 of them saw M32. Only one observer looked at the right time to see M74. The next problem object was M33, which shut out 18 people. Nine observers did not see M72 and M30 was missed by only 7 people. At least 16 of the 24 used GO-TO telescopes. The smallest aperture in this club was 60mm. I'm sure Meade never expected an ETX-60 to ever get as much use as this one does." Other observers making their presence know were Don Machholz, amongst one of the first to suggest a Messier Marathon and the only one to do the marathon by memory. He gave up GPS, GoTo, PushTo, analog setting circles and star hoping. And. And. And, he still managed to get 102. To repeat he remembered the sequences and locations by memory. Besides this he treated many to M&M candies in honor of the event. Thanks Don! From Tucson there was, as always, Andrew Cooper and his trusty observing side kick Carter Smith. I really missed their almost constant chatter the marathon! Speaking of Andrew and if you have chance, check his web site at http://www.siowl.com/index.html?marathon2006 for more information and some nice pictures and don't miss the one of Rick giving the sunset talk. Another site I can suggest is Jeremy Perez at http://www.perezmedia.net/beltofvenus/archives/000548.html and check his picture of Don Machholz and Brent Archinal. This marathon should be noted for the large number of first time marathoners and their high counts. Checking the table we find Keith Schlottman had 108; Jimmy Ray, 107; Jeremy Perez, 100 and Dan Gruber with 99. We are also awarding 41 certificates to 41 observers who found 50 or more objects. Another interesting fact about this marathon was the number of observers turning in lists with less than 50 objects. These five observers will be awarded with honorable mention certificates. There were a few observers observing Friday night and, amongst them were Steve Gifford who imaged 99 objects in the Messier catalog. Also Steve Jaynes found 109 Messier objects, missing only M31.