EP36 - Sunday, 7th February 2021 7:30pm GMT - Charles Messier - Marathon Man by Keith Townsend

[Grant]

Our guest speaker this week is Keith Townsend from http://www.astronomymatters.co.uk/ to give us his talk Charles Messier - Marathon Man by Keith Townsend.

Keith's childhood interest in astronomy developed into telescope ownership some 25 years ago and imaging became a large part of this around the turn of the century. Hee never made it off the slippery slope and continue to suffer the consequences to this day!

Keith was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2016 and have been delivering talks to a wide range of groups for almost 10 years.

One of his passions is to try to unlock the fascination many people have for the night sky, but don’t realise it.

This weeks talk is 'Charles Messier - Marathon Man by Keith Townsend'. Messier is a name that must be known to pretty much every northern hemisphere astronomer, if not the world over, but how much do we know about the man himself?

Part one of this talk looks at the historical aspects of his life and achievements; what influenced and drove him to seek out and catalogue the celestial objects he did.

Working with relatively crude equipment by todays standard, he set about establishing a list that has obsessed many visual astronomers for decades.

Part two considers the 'Messier Marathon’ itself, with regard to the best time in 2021 to attempt it - the schedule for the night in question and the pitfalls that await us.

I'm very much looking forward to this talk - it sounds very interesting

See you all Sunday!

Meeting details below:

Topic: EP36 - Sunday, 7th February 2021 7:30pm GMT - Charles Messier - Marathon Man by Keith Townsend
Time: Feb 7, 2021 07:30 PM London

Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/92006758598?pwd=VWt2a3FrNHFrVnNnOWhtZ01KaXZnQT09

Meeting ID: 920 0675 8598
Passcode: 012211

[Grant]

See you all in just over half an hour

[happy-kat]

That was great, thank you Keith and FLO, interesting to learn surprises like no eyepieces.

[Mark at Beaufort]

That was an excellent and very professional talk by Keith. As someone that has observed the 110 objects in the messier list I enjoyed the challenge of trying to observe 101 in March. I think latitude is an important consideration - I know that m83 is difficult from the UK although it was easy using binoculars from a mountain top in California.