Please submit any scheduled Messier Marathon 2011 Events!
Messier Marathoners: Send me your results! (2011 or earlier)
  • 2011 Messier Marathon Results

    Messier Marathon 2011

    In the year 2011, Full Moon will occur on March 18, just about the best Messier Marathon time of other years. So we are left with less favorable occasions around either of the New Moons of March 4 or April 3, or weekends of March 5 or April 2, 2011. On either of these dates, it will be difficult to hunt down all Messier Objects in one night.

    As it is always delightful to add to the Messier Marathon the observation of as many of the planets as possible, with Uranus impossible this year (like upcoming years), together with Jupiter, and on the March date Mercury and Neptune, on April date Mars. So on either date, you may probably not see more than 4 or 5 planets (counting Pluto in).

    Some comets brighter than about mag 14.0 will be visible; we will list them below from various sources (e.g., IAU's Observable Comets page, Skyhound's Comet Chasing page, Gary Kronk's list of current comets and the Fachgruppe Kometen list):

    Comet                       RA  (2000.0)  Dec  mag    RA  (2000.0)  Dec  mag
                                    March  5, 2011            March 30, 2011
    
    C/2010 B1 Cardinal          04:32:46 -16:34.6  14.5   04:33:18 -17:37.9  14.8
    123P/West-Hartley           05:06:01 +38:06.3  14.7   05:44:15 +37:41.3  14.6
    29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1  10:59:44 -00:13.9  15.6   10:49:19 +00:40.7  15.6  Outbursts! c. 11m
    C/2010 X1 Elenin            11:44:41 +00:15.0  14.8   11:14:21 +03:19.6  14.1
    P/2010 V1 Ikeya-Murakami    16:59:02 -29:55.0  12.4   17:26:04 -32:55.2  12.5
    C/2010 G2 Hill              17:54:21 +45:56.9  14.8   18:26:39 +60:54.9  14.3
    P/2010 H2 Vales             18:24:53 -26:59.2  14.2   18:47:47 -28:01.2  14.0  
    P/2006 U1 LINEAR            18:41:06 -28:06.7  14.9   22:09:18 -10:15.6  13.2  = P/2011 A4 LINEAR
    9P/Tempel                   20:28:02 -23:08.9  12.3   21:38:32 -20:13.1  12.9
    C/2006 S3 LONEOS            20:28:48 -06:21.9  13.9   20:30:41 -05:38.9  13.7
    C/2009 P1 Garradd           22:29:15 -18:37.4  13.3   22:43:11 -14:53.8  12.9  close to sun - elong 15/32 deg
    
    Southern marathoners get a faint "surplus" comet:
    C/2009 F4 McNaught          16:37:54 -70:44.2  14.5   16:32:02 -76:16.4  14.4
    
    For the record: Southerners with very large instruments may still try to spot now-faint (mag 20.4) old friend C/1995 O1 Hale-Bopp at RA 01:28.4, Dec -83:41.0!

    Note that occasionally comets become bright shortly (like Hyakutake in 1996, Ikeya-Zhang and Utsunomiya in 2002), so check back for possible updates shortly before Marathon date. Also occasionally, a supernova of brightness available to amateur telesopes may have flashed up be spottable in time (like SN 1998S in NGC 3877, SN 2002ap in M74, SN 2006X in M100 in their years of appearance).

    This year, of the "first" four minor planets, (1) Ceres will be almost impossible to observe, and also (2) Pallas and (4) Vesta difficult - all appearing in the morning sky; only (3) Juno will be easily observable. For those who want to try these objects, data for the two weekends in question are as follows:

    Planet       RA  (2000.0)  Dec  mag   RA  (2000.0)  Dec  mag
                     March 4, 2011           April 3, 2011
    
    
    (1) Ceres 21:51:19 -20:10.6 9.2 22:36:21 -16:55.4 9.3 (2) Pallas 19:37:40 +07:06.5 10.5 20:07:33 +10:35.8 10.4 (3) Juno 11:35:37 +02:31.9 9.1 11:13:17 +07:05.4 9.5 (4) Vesta 19:11:22 -20:21.8 7.8 20:07:49 -18:57.6 7.6

    Also, meteors from various showers may occur, and depending on your location, you may be able to observe the International Space Station, ISS.

    Messier Marathon Events 2011

    Again, we plan to announce all scheduled 2011 Messier Marathon Events here. Please submit any scheduled events for announce here.

    If you have undertaken, or participated in, a Messier Marathon, 2011 or earlier, if not already done so, please send me your or your group's results, or the link to your results page, for inclusion in our Messier Marathon Results page!


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    Hartmut Frommert
    Christine Kronberg
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    Last Modification: March 18, 2011