Subject: [amastro] Huachuca Astronomy Club Messier Marathon Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2000 13:50:02 EST From: HEALYHealyDave@cs.com To: haclist@egroups.com, amastro@egroups.com Seven members began the HAC's Messier Marathon at Junk Bond Observatory near Sierra Vista, Arizona last night: Glenn Sanner, John Cassella, Dave Healy, Doug Snyder, and Ward, Jennifer, and Jonathan Sherwood. Three "hard core" members did the all-nighter, ending with a view of the crescent moon rising in morning twilight 46 hours before new. Glen Sanner, John Cassella and Dave Healy logged 106, 106, and 109 of the 110 Messier objects respectively. Healy cheated by using his computer-slewed Celestron 14, and managed to steal four or five hours of sleep as well. Glen's accomplishment was particularly impressive because he was forced by his schedule into a late start, assembling his 18 1/2-inch Dobsonian about 8PM, by which time the other contestants had already logged 20 to 40 objects. Glenn struggled to find the difficult western-twilight objects such as M74, by then well into the Sierra Vista Aurora, but managed to see them all. A night of good-to-excellent transparency was a major help in finding both evening-twilight and dawn-twilight objects. For example, I was able to see the globular cluster M2 in the C14 within two minutes after it had risen--one of the Mule Mountain peaks was also in the field of view. For John and Glen no sleep; was it whistle-to-whistle. In the difficult Virgo-galaxy-cluster region they used Healy's computer-slewed C14 to confirm the identity of, but not to locate, some of the galaxies. Glen and John each spotted the same 106 of the 110 objects, missing four of the dawn-twilight objects: M2, M73, M72, and M30. We missed one or more of the dawn-twilight objects because our Marathon was scheduled for March 4 (and actually held on March 3 because of poor weather prospects for the fourth). This is too early by about two weeks to see M30, the most difficult of the objects. (M30 rose this morning at 6:09, 46 minutes after the beginning of astronomical twilight). The early date also made finding M2, M73 and M72 impossible for the manually-operated telescopes because twilight washed out the field stars usually used to star-hop to these objects. However, these early dates were probably the best in 2000 for a Messier Marathon, because by the time the moon (full on March 19) is well out of the sky by the end of the month it will probably be impossible to sight a number of the difficult evening-twilight objects. I highly recommend the Club award certificates to Glen Sanner and John Cassella for last night's accomplishment. Healy shouldn't get a certificate because his sighting of 109 Messier objects was accomplished by pressing buttons on a keypad. However I think that the Club should forego any disciplinary action. Dave Healy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message is from the AmAstro mailing list. To post, send mail to amastro@eGroups.com. To unsubscribe, send a blank e-mail to amastro-unsubscribe@eGroups.com.