Messier Marathon

[Buzzard75]

This is a post that I created on our astronomy club's Facebook page so it's just a copy and paste from there. It doesn't go into too many details about the actual objects we observed, but rather just the event itself. Hope you enjoy the read!

This weekend would have been our monthly members-only dark sky night. This time however, we decided to try something a little different and we planned a campout at Pettigrew State Park for some of us to attempt a Messier Marathon. For those who don't know, Charles Messier was a French astronomer. His claim to fame is organizing the Messier Catalogue. It's a catalogue of permanent objects in the night sky to aid comet hunters so they would not mistake the objects in the catalogue for comets. There are 110 objects in this catalogue. A Messier Marathon is an event in which you attempt to view all 110 (or as many as you can depending on where you are) in one night. In our area, the best time to make an attempt is in mid-March to early April. It's a bit difficult from our latitude since several of the objects are very low on the horizon, but it's still possible. Last night, there were two of us who were able to make it to the campout and make the attempt, myself and David. When we arrived, the wind was pretty strong on the lake. As it got closer to sunset the wind died down and the skies cleared. It wasn't just us out there though, there were two others. Joe was a local and Stan came down from Virginia Beach. They just happened to be there that night with their large reflectors. While they weren't part of our group or undertaking the Marathon, we still got to see some pretty amazing sights throughout the night with their 17.5" scopes. While the skies may have been clear, the seeing conditions weren't that great as evidenced by the shimmering of both Venus and Mercury early in the evening and Jupiter and Mars early in the morning. Mercury, Venus and Mars looked like disco balls of color when viewing with any sort of magnification. Jupiter was extremely wavy, but you could still make out four of the moons. As for the Messier objects, almost everything we set our sights on we were able to see. However, we did have one failure early in the evening. On the second target, M74, a very large face-on spiral galaxy, we just couldn't see it due to the seeing conditions, the dimness of the object and the amount of light that was still in the sky. So our attempt for 110 was basically over from the beginning, but we didn't stop. We chewed through 69 objects in the catalogue until around midnight when we hit a wall. Now we had to play the waiting game until things rose high enough or came out from behind obstructions. We persevered for a few more hours picking up one or two here and there, until about 3:30am. At this point, the temperature had dropped to below freezing and all our equipment was beginning to dew up and frost over. It was hard on the equipment and the cold was starting to soak into ourselves. We decided at this point to call it a night. The objects we didn't see were the one we missed early in the night and the rest were going to be too low or hidden by some obstructions anyway. It just wasn't worth it for us to stay out any longer so we packed up for the night. In all, I logged 97 objects in the catalogue. David may have been +/-1 or 2 objects on his list. There were a couple his scope just wouldn't slew to. Getting 97 objects is no small feat. It requires a large enough aperture to collect enough light, decent enough seeing conditions and very dark skies. There's also the cold and the time factor to take into account. It's much easier to do out west and very difficult to do on the east coast. While we didn't get all of them during the Marathon, we should be able to finish the remaining 13 objects later in the year. It will be a bit warmer, the objects will be higher in the sky and they'll come out a lot earlier. I want to thank David for coming out with me and enjoying the experience. I look forward to finishing my catalogue with you in a couple months.

 

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That's David in the picture with his C11. Behind him to the right is my Orion XX12g and the two other scopes in the picture are Joe and Stan's.

[Demonperformer]

Although a bit too far north to attempt this myself, I have read that the most difficult objects are M74 in the evening and M30 in the morning.

Well done on 97/110 (I won't get into the "should it be /109 - m102 is it/isn't it" arguement!). Quite a feat, indeed.

[Eastman]

7 hours ago, Buzzard75 said:

I logged 97 objects in the catalogue

Great score for one night, some big scopes there!!!

[Paul73]

1 hour ago, Demonperformer said:

Well done on 97/110 (I won't get into the "should it be /109 - m102 is it/isn't it" arguement!). Quite a feat, indeed.

Sounds like a fun night. 

Definitally incluse M102. It is one of the easy ones!!!

Paul

[Stu]

What a great night’s observing and a fine achievement! Nice pictures too

[Buzzard75]

It was a lot of fun, but I think it will be a while before I try it again. It was extremely cold and I was a bit unprepared for it. It got a lot colder than the forecasts. I'll also do a bit more planning on where I setup my scope in terms of obstructions, so I can be sure to see everything, and also in terms of dew/frost protection. My dew heater controller is a Kendrick and it went into low voltage protection. I probably just needed to turn that off, but I didn't know how at the time. My power pack has a light on it that tells me when it needs to be recharged and it wasn't to that point yet so the low voltage protection was probably unnecessary.

[Demonperformer]

6 hours ago, Buzzard75 said:

I'll also do a bit more planning on where I setup my scope in terms of obstructions, so I can be sure to see everything,

The nice thing about the MM is that there is a nice relaxing(!) period in the middle when you get to do a lot of the things that are not time-sensitive, so it is possible to start in a position that is good for "west/setting" objects and then move the scope half way through to a position that is good for "east/rising" objects. Of course, if you are part of a group, you still need to plan that in advance - tripping over everyone else's telescope at 2am is not known for enhancing a spirit of camaraderie.

[Buzzard75]

15 hours ago, Demonperformer said:

The nice thing about the MM is that there is a nice relaxing(!) period in the middle when you get to do a lot of the things that are not time-sensitive, so it is possible to start in a position that is good for "west/setting" objects and then move the scope half way through to a position that is good for "east/rising" objects. Of course, if you are part of a group, you still need to plan that in advance - tripping over everyone else's telescope at 2am is not known for enhancing a spirit of camaraderie.

Yeah, that was the waiting game I referred to. I could have moved and probably should have, but my GoTo alignment was so dead on accurate I didn't want to risk it. I had hoped I'd be there long enough for stuff to get a bit higher, but I looked at my chart and didn't think it would happen. Maybe next time I attempt the marathon, I'll do it without the GoTo to give myself a real challenge. Or maybe not.

[Mark at Beaufort]

An enjoyable observing report. It must be great to try and view all the Messier objects in one night. From my latitude of 52 degrees I cannot see M7 from my back garden. Although I completed the list several years ago I found the GCs in Sagittarius very difficult to see especially M69 and M70. I remember I had to set up my 4" APO Frac on a very high tripod to see M70 and only managed because the sky was crystal clear to the horizon.

So well done getting so many in one night.

[Demonperformer]

7 hours ago, Mark at Beaufort said:

I found the GCs in Sagittarius very difficult to see especially M69 and M70.

It is quite surprising the number of times I have seen this comment, and the number of people who have seen all the messiers except #70. Yes, they are both fairly low down from out latitude, but they are about the same declination.  It is clearly a phenomenon, but why #70 should prove to be so much more difficult than #69 I don't know.