From: "Shawn & Jennifer Clark" <sd&jkclark@tyler.net>
To: <spider@seds.org>
Subject: 1999 Messier Marathon Results
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 23:42:01 -0600

Observing Report:  Night of 3/19/99, morning of 3/20/99

Observers:  Shawn & Jennifer Clark

Number of Messiers Viewed:  107 of 110, daylight caught us before we could
bag M72, M73, or M30.

Location:  Star Mountain, Texas (between Fort Davis and Balmorhea), Lat
~30-50', Long ~103-50'

Conditions:  Altitude approximately 4500 feet, southern lower plateau of
mountain.  Transparency was good, about 7th magnitude early in the evening
fell to about 6.5 later in the evening.  Seeing was poor/mediocre entire
session.  Breezy, clear and cool, about 35 F most of the night.

Instrument:  8" SCT (Celestar 8) w/ 8x50 finder.

Comments:
This was Jennifer's first Marathon and my second.  We both observed 107
objects and took short notes on each.  Started well because we were able to
catch M74 which I had missed in my previous marathon.  We fell behind in
the morning--probably spent too much time viewing non-Messiers during the
AM.  Got lost in Pegasus in the morning (groggy) so we wasted too much time
finding M15.  The sky was becoming too bright by the time we tried M72 and
M73.  M30 was out of the question.  

Shawn & Jennifer Clark
e-mail: sd&jkclark@tyler.net