Please submit any scheduled Messier Marathon 2019 Events!
Messier Marathoners: Send me your results! (2019 or earlier)

Messier Marathon 2019

In the year 2019, New Moon will occur on March 6 and again on April 5, so that the best Marathon time in mid-March will be prevented by the Moon. There will be two opportunities for Messier Marathon, the first on March 9/10 and the second, primary for mid-northern observers, on March 30/31, 2019. On neither of these dates, a full score of 110 will be easy for mid-nothern observers. According to Tom Polakis' investigation, on the first date (March 9/10), the full 110 will be possible only between latitudes 9deg and 25d. N, limited by M52 and M30. On the second date (March 30/31), it will be theoretically possible between 18d. and 40d. Northern latitude, limited by M110 and M30, with M74 and M110 extremely difficult.

Messier Marathon Events 2019

Again, we plan to announce all scheduled 2019 Messier Marathon Events here.

The 2019 All Arizona Messier Marathon is scheduled for the weekend of March 30/31, 2019. This event is sponsored again by the Saguaro Astronomy Club (SAC) (for the 27th time). It will be held at the same site as the last years, the Salome Emergency Airfield (a.k.a. "Hovatter Airstrip"), an abandoned airport, about 100 miles west of Phoenix. - Rick Tejera
Also see SAC's 2019 All Arizona Messier Marathon announce on web, their Announce on Facebook (note their facebook page).
Astroport India is organizing Messier and Deep Sky Marathon events 2019 in five locations, distributed all over india, for two timeslots: March 6-11, 2019 and March 30-April 9, 2019. The locations are: PAN India, Astroport Sariska - Rajasthan, Astroport Camp Dev Villas - Kanha, Madhya Pradesh, Astroport Jog Falls - The Thash Resort, Karnataka, Astroport Lohagarh Fort Resort - Jaipur, Rajasthan and Astroport Pugmark Resort - Ranthambore, Rajasthan. For more detail, See their press release and visit their website. - Ankit Kumar Singh, Team Head - Eduation ("Arrive Curious, Depart Amazed")
Rafael Leão and Julio Lobo are organizing a Messier Marathon in Brazil on the city of Campinas, state of São Paulo, at Observatório Municipal de Campinas Jean Nicolini for June 1, 2019 (in Brazil, due to weather conditions, this is the best date). - Rafael Leão

Please submit any scheduled events for announce here.

If you have undertaken, or participated in, a Messier Marathon, 2019 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!

Extracurricular Activities

While it is the goal of the Messier Marathon to observe as many Messier Objects in a night as possible, it is sometimes convenient and enjoyable to combine the Messier Marathon with some other observational activities, in case some time is left during the night session. In the following, we propose some options to select from:

Deepsky enthusiasts can look for additional clusters, nebulae, and galaxies. While you can certainly pick and observe whatever you like, we also provide a list of additional deepsky objects to select from (also available with data).

It is always delightful to add to the Messier Marathon the observation of as many of the planets as possible, with Uranus and Neptune at least extremely difficult on the primary weekend.

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, Seiichi Yoshida's Visual Comet lists for the northern and southern hemisphere, and the Fachgruppe Kometen list):

Comet                  RA  (2000.0)  Dec  mag     RA  (2000.0)  Dec  mag
                           March 10, 2019             March 31, 2019

78P/Gehrels 2          01:10:42.8 +07:15:42 13.9  01:58:26.1 +11:10:05 13.9
C/2018 Y1 (Iwamoto)    04:50:11.9 +34:16:51 12.9  04:26:02.9 +33:22:12 14.4
46P/Wirtanen           09:43:04.1 +42:44:15 10.9  09:58:36.9 +35:55:33 13.5
123P/West-Hartley      11:18:58.1 +31:45:40 12.7  11:04:14.7 +29:26:34 13.0
C/2017 M4 (ATLAS)      17:31:43.7 -22:54:15 13.7  17:20:32.7 -28:06:39 13.5

C/2016 M1 (PANSTARRS)  03:57:09.0 -58:02:11 12.7  04:28:21.9 -49:21:23 13.1

The last of these comets is only accessible for southern observers.

Note that occasionally comets become bright shortly (like Hyakutake in 1996, Hale-Bopp in 1997, 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, SN 2012aw in M95, and SN 2014J in M82 in their years of appearance).

This year, of the "first" four minor planets, three will be easily available, while (4) Vesta will be probably impossible because of small elongation to the Sun. (3) Juno will be visible in the evening, (2) Pallas best around midnight, (1) Ceres in the morning. 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 10, 2019             March 31, 2019

(1) Ceres              16:42:08.3 -16:01:11  8.5  16:52:25.4 -16:31:08  8.2
(2) Pallas             14:11:02.8 +07:58:26  8.1  14:02:31.9 +15:07:19  7.9
(3) Juno               04:42:29.1 +09:11:59  9.4  05:19 18.6 +12:02:41  9.7
(4) Vesta              23:22:15.1 -08:57:46  7.9  00:00 13.1 -05:09:06  8.0

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

Please send me any results of your Messier Marathon for inclusion in our Messier Marathon Results page!

Messier Marathon Home < 2020 | 2018 >

Hartmut Frommert
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Last Modification: May 19, 2019