From: Joe Stieber
Date: Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 7:53 AM  
Subject: 2010 Messier Marathon Results
 
  Hartmut,
 
 I just came across your Messier Marathon pages at the SEDS Spider, and I
 saw your call for 2010 results. I'm not sure what format you desire, but
 here's a tabulation of my 2010 effort on the night of March 17-18:
 
 http://sjastro.org/2010_MM_Log.pdf
 
 My site for the Marathon was Coyle Field in the New Jersey Pinelands,
 about 40.5 miles (65 km) east of center-city Philadelphia, PA (USA).
 It's a fairly dark site (at least for New Jersey), and on a good night,
 I can see to nearly magnitude 6 overhead (I've been able to regularly
 spot M13 naked eye). There are light domes in several places around the
 horizon, most notably from Philadelphia to the west and Atlantic City,
 NJ, to the south.
 
 However, it's still a great site for the Messier Marathon since the
 horizons are quite low -- it's a large air field that's infrequently
 used for aviation, and it's surrounded by a "pygmy pine" forest.
 
 All objects were observed through my 12.5-inch Newtonian telescope on a
 Dobsonian mount (of course, some were seen naked eye and/or through
 binoculars too). To find the Messier objects, I used the geometrical
 method with just a simple Rigel reflex finder on the scope (although I
 did star hop in a couple of places, most notably, the Virgo cluster). I
 also used binoculars occasionally to familiarize myself with the star
 field around some of the objects.
 
 I saw a total of 103 Messier objects over the course of the night. The
 objects I did not see were M74 in the evening and M55, 75, 2, 72, 73 and
 30 in the morning. I probably would have had a few more of the morning
 objects, but I "ran out of gas" and ended my effort around 5:15 am EDT
 (about 20 minutes before the onset of astronomical twilight).
 
 Notice that in homage to Messier, I also spotted two comets, 81P/Wild
 and C/2009 K5 (McNaught).
 
 Since I was getting ahead of schedule after midnight (I was actually
 waiting for Messier objects to rise and/or get high enough to spot), I
 took some time to look for Omega Centauri, which transits at about 3
 degrees altitude at Coyle Field. Unfortunately, Atlantic City and it's
 light pillar are due south, which thwarted my effort to see it (one of
 many occasions that I have failed to see it from Coyle). I have seen
 Omega from about 0.5 degree latitude further south in NJ, at East Point
 on the Delaware Bay (a spot that looks out towards the dark sky over the
 Atlantic Ocean).
 
 Joe Stieber
 Maple Shade, NJ