Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 20:44:32 -0800 (PST) From: Jeff Tibb Subject: Messier Marathon Report Instrument - 10" F/6 PDHQ Dobsonian by Discovery. I only used the 25mm Plossel lens that came as standard equipment with the scope this night. Date - Saturday March 29 - Sunday March 30, 2003 Report - This year our club lost its dark site ^Ñthe Crop Circle^Ò due to legal complications entangling the owner, so I had to hunt for a new dark site for us and wound up with an even darker site than we had been using before. We now go to ^ÑAmerican Horse Lake^Ò (AHL) near Geary, Oklahoma. It was pretty cold out at AHL last night but luckily the wind was down. It had been real windy all day here - about 20 mph - but at night it was less than 5, and for Oklahoma that ain't bad! About 15 of us showed up for our club's marathon this year at a brand new site that I helped uncover and the general impression was a very positive one, The skies are actually darker than our old site! Hoo Ray! This is a fishing lake with lots of prize blue gills in the water and as our group settled in a number of fishermen on their way home came to investigate who the crazy people were just arriving at sunset. They were all real nice and thought that what we were doing was kool. When the marathon began I spent considerable time on M77. I had spent some real time on M74 last weekend and although I looked right at it, I saw nothing in my warm up session. When I looked at M74 again I saw WAY less. I gave up on that one quickly but still spent about 30 minutes on M77. This was the one I had to actually give up on and I'll tell you that every object I give up on is a painful decision, but you have to 'fish or cut bait' at some point and I moved on. The sky was crystal clear and I moved quickly through the rest of the evening sky glows having only trouble with M33, but seeing a pair of stars in the exact spot that were smudged and that I could not resolve any better, I claimed it. This was my most questionable call of the night, but I feel good about it as there was no other explanation and it was in the exact spot that M33 belongs in. I hustled through the winter stuff and started into the spring galaxies. By 9:48 I had entered the Virgo cluster which surprised me with the speed I had gotten there. I found M59 and M60 after a few minutes and as I was looking for M58 the clouds came to visit! Cirrus clouds covered Virgo for the next 2 hours! I could see the main stars but nothing else! Some of the nice folks set up hot dog and hamburger grills and fed us. This was great! Thanks! By 12:30 half the people had left as the clouds had become real pests but just then a break started from the north. Hercules was very clear and I picked up the 2 GC's there, and continued to wait. Soon my patience was rewarded. Virgo opened up and I worked my way gingerly through the main cluster area. Then slowly the summer objects came into view. I had really worked fast earlier and I had to wait for a lot of stuff to rise. Luckily for me I worked fast, because this turned out to be only the first of 3 interruptions for clouds. I worked whatever part of the sky was open that I needed things from and slowly caught everything by about 2:30 when the second cloud break happened. By now it was about 28 degrees and only 7 or 8 of us remained. A couple more left. By 3 I got back to work on everything up to Sagittarius, and was hit one more time with clouds! 30 more minutes of waiting as only the southeast had clouds! Ouch! There was nothing I needed anywhere else where it was clear! Suddenly the clouds cleared and POW! I raced through Scutum and Sagittarius and on to the morning sky glows. M15, M55, M75, M72, M73 (I needed to use my Sky Atlas and build star hops for those last 4) I found M2 as big as a watermelon and proceeded to look for M30 for about 20 minutes. I know I was looking right at it as the sky brightened and washed any chance of seeing it away. But I finished the night quite happy recording a score of 107 out of 110, which surprised even me. M74, M77, and M30 were my only misses and I know I looked right at each of them. If it hadn't been for the repeated cloud cover I could have taken a couple hours of sleep in the middle, but I guess that will have to wait for next year! The clouds undoubtedly dissuaded a few people from attempting to complete the marathon and there were only 5 of us at dawn and I was the only one still counting. I would give reports on the others but since they have not given me counts, and none of them went through to dawn I will have to ask them to try again next year. Jeff