Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 21:22:29 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Tibb Subject: Messier Marathon Results Messier Marathon Report April 13th/14th 2002 Background On March 9th/10th I went to our observing site to do a run through of the marathon as I had never done one before and our club had scheduled our official club marathon for the following weekend. The seeing conditions were ideal. Having never seen more than 35 messier objects total before that evening and armed only with an 8" Dobsonian and good paper charts I managed to locate 91 M objects before dawn. Several people stayed with me until midnight and Bill Wilburn stayed until 2:30 at which point he had logged 66 M objects himself. The following Saturday was completely cloudy all day until holes started to form around 5pm. This was enough to encourage seventeen people to make the one-hour drive from Oklahoma City to our club observing site in Hennessey. However the holes that we all saw on our way north turned back into clouds by the time we arrived and stayed that way all night. No one saw anything although almost everyone stayed until 11:30 just to talk, so the night was not a total waste. The official club marathon date was reset for April 6th/7th. That day proved to be cloudy as well and there was no hope to do the marathon and the alternate date of April 13th/14th was established as the final opportunity for 2002. The night before saw heavy thunderstorms that lasted until early afternoon and both the national and local forecasters were calling for them to resume through the night after a short break in the afternoon. I watched the sky myself, and looked at the national and regional radar maps and decided that it would be worth it to try. I left about 30 minutes later than I should have because I didn't think there would be much of a clearing until about 10pm and was ready to just camp out for a while. But as I drove the sky almost completely cleared itself. I drove faster planning on playing "cloud hole tag" to see what score I could come up with that way. When I arrived, there were two other people, David Bell and Casey Coffey there who told me I was late. Both of them were fairly new members and were there to learn what they could see. Neither planned to do the entire marathon but just to see new things and learn a little. Evening I set up quickly and began working the western sky as fast as I could. I'm not really sure which objects should have still been available at this time for early evening but my late start certainly cost me M76 and M79. I might have picked up M79, but there were patchy clouds all around and I was afraid that I would miss several easy ones while looking for M79 so I gave up on it. It was a decision I felt right about at the time but it turned out to be wrong later as things cleared up and M79 was gone. After giving up on 79 I proceeded to work my list forward from there and hit most of the winter objects like clockwork. Half of the sky was still cloudy but that luckily was to the east although Cassiopeia was covered until it set. That was OK. I could get those two in a few hours if it cleared. As I finished the winter area and started to dive into the galaxies of Leo and Ursa Major a pesky layer of cirrus clouds started to appear. I thought this was a bad time for that to happen but I struggled through them and didn't miss anything. Around Midnight Dennis Wigley, our clubs president arrived to both the cheers and puzzlement of the three of us. He like so many others had thought the night impossible earlier on but after seeing it clear he made a late start to join in. He only brought his camera and barn door tracker with him but no telescope. It was pretty soupy for a while but a little after midnight it began to clear from the north. I went after some of the large globular and open clusters that had come up while I waited for my break to start in on the Virgo cluster. The break came and never ended. The rest of the night was very clear although incredibly humid. EVERYTHING I brought was soaked by the time I left at dawn. All my charts and books were very wet and I had to treat them gingerly. My list of items observed started to run by about 3am. I had to clear off my finder scope and eyepieces several times, and the moisture may have adversely affected my seeing in the last couple of hours, but I'm not going to claim that I missed anything because of it. One of the highlights of the evening for me was as I worked the Virgo cluster and checked them off one by one my excitement built. I had missed M88 last time and didn't spend any extra time as I was behind when I got to Virgo that night and had to hustle. Tonight I was on time and just worked my plan. There was only one galaxy left in the main cluster and I still had a tiny nagging doubt that I had not actually seen the right ones that I had recorded or that I was off course and seeing the same things twice, but that last one was M87. When I found it I just shouted with joy, as it was clearly a big elliptical and at least as bright or brighter than any that I had seen in the group. I knew at that moment that I had made no mistakes and that if the weather held I was in for a memorable night. I had done the Virgo cluster cleanly, and was very happy as I began to work the summer constellations. Dennis and Casey left shortly after that and I worked with David until he finally packed it up at about 4am after I had helped him find the major objects in Scutum and Sagittarius. My hats off to David though as it was him that helped me find M83, and without the assistance of looking through his Telrad I might not have found it myself. The rest of the night after Virgo went pretty much according to plan. I deviated very little from my intended order of objects and did not miss anything until I got to M75 which is always hard to find and was made a little harder as the remaining glow from Oklahoma City to the south was placed right in the way. David stayed until I had found (what I thought at the time was) my 92nd object thus breaking my own personal record for one night. The last hour went very slowly after finding M15, 2, and 72 I gave up on 73, then went on to look for 30. My hat is off again for those of you who can work the twilight. I have a tough time finding any guide stars at that time and end up sweeping larger sections of sky than I would like to for objects that are already dimmer than they normally appear. In retrospect I should have stayed on M30 longer as I was star hopping the area east of gamma Capricorn and may have found it in a few minutes. But instead I jumped across looking for M31, 32 and 110 thinking that finding two or three was more worthy of my time than one. I found nothing at that time, and ended the night with a total score of what I thought was 96. With the poor weather we started with I felt that I had "turned a sows ear into a silk purse", and was quite pleased with my results. I only wish more members of the club had been as optimistic as the three of us had been and ventured out to join us. My final joy came a couple of days later when I went over my list of observed objects one more time and realized that I had actually used the same numbers twice three different times. My final score was not 96 but in fact 99. I am looking forward to doing it all again next March and shooting to break 100. I am also planning on using one of the alternate lists and doing another marathon this summer or fall. I found the overall experience to be great fun and very exciting. I would encourage anyone with a desire to do it to give it a try. It is unfortunate that we couldn't have had the 17 people who showed up the first time come out again and complete the night with me, but the weather just didn't look good. Hopefully we will all be able to do it together next year.