Please submit any scheduled Messier Marathon 2020 Events!
Messier Marathoners: Send me your results! (2020 or earlier)

Messier Marathon 2020

In the year 2020, New Moon will occur on March 24, providing a good opportunity for a Messier Marathon on both the weekends of March 21/22 (primary) and March 28/29, 2020 (secondary). On both these dates, there will be a good opportunity to attempt to hunt down all Messier Objects in one night from suitable mid-northern latitude locations. The first, primary weekend, most difficult will be M30 in the morning, while on the second date, M74 and M77 will be tough challenges in the evening sky. According to Tom Polakis' investigation, on the first primary occasion (March 21/22), a full score of 110 Messier Objects should be possible from locations between 7 deg and 35 deg Northern Latitude, with most difficult object M30 in the morning, and southern limit from M110. On the secondary date (March 28/29), the limits will be 15 deg and 39 deg North. M110 will limit the south and M30 the north for both dates.

Messier Marathon Events 2020

Again, we plan to announce all scheduled 2020 Messier Marathon Events here.

Note: Regretfully, many scheduled events for the 2020 Messier Marathon have been cancelled due to the recent events concerning the COVID-19 outbreak.

The event will take place at the Oakley Observatory on the campus of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology located in Terre Haute, IN. The event will start at 7:30pm on March 21st and end at 8:00am on March 22nd. The event will be open to the public and be free admission. -- Marisa Dimperio
Rafael Leão and Julio Lobo, on 2020, will be attempting the second Messier Marathon of the "Observatório Municipal de Campinas Jean Nicolini" at the city of Campinas, state of São Paulo, Brazil. To avoid bad weather conditions they are scheduling two separate dates, the first date will be May 22 and the second will be June 19. People interested in participate should contact: Rafael Leão or Julio Lobo. -- Rafael Leão
Note: The 2020 All Arizona Messier Marathon has been cancelled due to recent events concerning the COVID-19 outbreak. -- Rick Tejera, SAC
The 2020 All Arizona Messier Marathon is scheduled for the weekend of March 28/29, 2020. This event is sponsored again by the Saguaro Astronomy Club (SAC) (for the 28th 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 2020 All Arizona Messier Marathon announce on web, their Announce on Facebook (note their facebook page).

Please submit any scheduled events for announce here.

If you have undertaken, or participated in, a Messier Marathon, 2020 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., Skyhound's Comet Chasing page, 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 22, 2020             March 29, 2020

C/2019 Y1 (ATLAS)           00 09 03.1 +36 38 19 13.7  00 14 56.2 +43 39 50 13.8
C/2018 N2 (ASASSN)          00 16 38.5 +51 16 04 14.2  00 24 02.3 +52 56 12 14.3
C/2017 T2 (PANSTARRS)       02 36 03.8 +65 58 12  8.6  02 52 49.7 +67 54 37  8.5
C/2020 A2 (Iwamoto)         04 59 28.4 +58 28 08 16.1  05 20 47.8 +52 31 41 16.6
C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS)           09 08 35.8 +67 42 52 10.9  08 16 31.1 +68 32 56 10.5

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, (3) Juno is easily visible (though faint), and both (2) Pallas and (4) Vesta can be observed. Only (1) Ceres is more difficult because it is close to the Sun.

Planet                 RA   (2000.0)   Dec   mag  RA   (2000.0)   Dec   mag
                           March 22, 2020             March 29, 2020

(1) Ceres              21:33:40.9 -21:01:53  9.3  21:43:53.1 -20:28:53  9.3
(2) Pallas             19 14 35.9 +10 47 37 10.3  19 20 19.4 +11 48 49 10.3
(3) Juno               13 09 59.5 +00 15 06  9.6  13 04 39.7 +01 15 23  9.5
(4) Vesta              03 53 36.4 +17 37 01  8.4  04 03 54.8 +18 20 46  8.4

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 < 2021 | 2019 >

Hartmut Frommert
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Last Modification: March 26, 2020