Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 20:36:19 -0500 From: Douglas Rudd To: spider@seds.org Subject: re: 2001 Messier Marathon Results The 2001 Des Moines Astronomical Society Messier Marathon was scheduled for March 24-25 at Ashton Observatory near Baxter, Iowa. All day long on the 24th, the forecast called for clearing skies. So Brad Houge and myself found ourselves at the observatory before sundown to wait for the skies to clear. But, as you'd guess, spring weather in Iowa is not very cooperative and the skies never cleared. So much for the second annual DMAS Messier Marathon. Or so I thought. Monday morning the 26th came with clear skies and the forecast, again, was calling for the skies to stay clear through Tuesday. I left work at 3:00 p.m., finished some other work I had to get done, and got to Ashton Observatory by 6:20 p.m. Unfortunately, the road into the observatory was closed because to the spring thaw and I had to hike in the last 3/8 mile carrying my scope, charts, food and water. By 7:00 p.m., I was all setup and had a chance to look at a beautiful crescent moon along with Jupiter and Saturn before getting down to business. One of my goals for the evening was to use my 114mm f/8 Celestron Newtonian. This kept me from seeing M33. I know I was looking in the right place, but I could see no evidence of the galaxy. The site at the observatory is also surrounded by trees. This is great for blocking the yard light on some of the surrounding farms, but it also blocks the first 10 to 12 degrees of the sky. By the time it was dark enough to see M77, it was in the trees. After missing the first 3 object on my list, including M74, the rest of the evening moved along very nicely until about 9:30 as the temperature drop into the low 20's F. As I was getting to work in Leo, my finderscope started frosting over enough that it was becoming unusable. At this point, I decided it was time to switch the 16" f/4.5 Newtonian in one of the observatory domes. I finished the night in the somewhat warmer dome. But moving to 16" presented another problem. I had printed all my charts out of my SkyTools software for my 114mm with its 6x30 finderscope and the 16" has a TelRad. It just made it a little tricky. The rest of the night went very well until dawn. The trees got in the way again and I was unable to get M55, M2, and M30. All in all, I am very pleased with my results. 104 out of 110 objects was just fantastic! The following is an hour by hour list of the objects I viewed: 7 to 8 - (6) - M42, M45, M41, M43, M31, M32 8 to 9 - (19) - M52, M110, M103, M76, M34, M79, M78, M1, M38, M36, M37, M35, M93, M47, M46, M50, M48, M44, M67 9 to 10 - (7) - M95, M96, M105, M65, M66, M81, M82 10 to 11 - (6) - M97, M108, M109, M40, M106, M63 11 to 12 - (8) - M94, M51, M101, M102, M13, M92, M53, M3 12 to 1 - (18) - M98, M99, M100, M85, M84, M86, M87, M89, M90, M91, M88, M58, M59, M60, M49, M61, M104, M68 1 to 2 - (13) - M83, M5, M57, M56, M29, M64, M12, M10, M107, M4, M80, M14, M9 2 to 3 - (5) - M71, M27, M39, M19, M62 3 to 4 - (15) - M11, M26, M17, M16, M18, M24, M25, M23, M20, M21, M8, M28, M22, M6, M7 4 to 5 - (7) - M15, M69, M54, M70, M73, M72, M75 Doug Rudd Des Moines, Iowa Des Moines Astronomical Society