From: "Shawn & Jennifer Clark" To: 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