Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 19:40:27 EST From: JABEINJI@aol.com To: spider@seds.org Subject: Marathon results Here are my reports for 2000 and so far 2001. They were written for the NOVAC listserv so the site details will not make much sense to other than NOVAC members. 3/05?/2000: Hi all, The weather and my schedule both cooperated last night. I arrived at Savage at 5:15 and got set up well before sundown. Leaving my scope, I backtracked to Hearttrouble ln. and pulled over in a spot that allowed me to watch the sunset. As the sun went down I got out my binoculars and began to scan the sky. As soon as Jupiter popped out I was picking out stars, but no faint fuzzies. Soon I could make out Orion, Auriga, Taurus, Perseus, and Cassiopea. I was getting a bit nervous as I figured that if I stayed too long before returning to the scope that I would lose more than just M77 and M74. I also discovered that I had left my red light at home! As I returned to Savage I tried not to think about missing the first objects and the problem of reading charts by white light. Instead I focused on how cloud free the sky was and how long it had been since I had gotten to spend a night out observing without the threat of frostbite. I logged the objects that I had picked up with the binoculars and aimed the scope towards Andromeda. It was right in the middle of the tree. Back to the binoculars and I could see M31 from up by the house. I could also see M33 in Triangulum-and isn't that Aries right there? Hey! M74 and M77 are still up!!. I quickly moved my scope up next to the house and picked up all of the early objects. I then moved back to the Tom Dietz memorial patio corner and got the objects in Orion, Gemini, Auriga, on up to the Virgo cluster by 9:40. Leo was still pretty low and Arcturus was just visible down in the muck so I decided to take a snack break and allow things to rotate a bit. I entered the Virgo zone at 10:20 and emerged out the other side at 11:04. For the first time in my personal marathon history I took a nap from 11:30 to 3:00. I highly recommend it. The morning objects proved the hardest. The skyglow to the east and the trees made everything difficult. For most of the objects in Saggitarius I grabbed binoculars and walked until I had a clear view. But the objects near the bottom of the constellation (M69,M70,M54) did not exactly jump out at me. I could not find M55, or M75 no matter how I tried. As sunrise approached I tried to figure out where capricorn was. I could see Altair, Delphinus and the water jar, but nothing showed underneath to the naked eye. Using binoculars I frantically scanned the sky hoping that I could pick up one or two more objects by luck. I spotted a globular near a lone dim star. It turned out to be an NGC above Fomalhaut but it gave me hope that I might yet spot something. I again tried to approximate where Capricorn was and I scanned the area with my telescope. There it was! a lone globular with a bright star just next to it. I scanned left and right hoping that I had the pair M72, M73 but nothing else showed. It must be M30. My charts confirmed it and at 5:45 I had my last object. 104 out of 110. 3/19/01: Well I wasn't planning on doing a marathon last night, but with the weather forecast looking so dismal I decided to head up to Savage at the last minute. I arrived just before 7:00 and set up like I was pit stopping a car in the Indy 500. I managed to get all of the early evening objects even though I had placed my scope so that M31 and M77 were in trees, and M74 was at the roof line of the house. Once I got to M79 in Lepus I took the time to put on my coat, say hello to Tom Dietz and Steve Blake, and move my scope down next to the flagstone patio. Everything went pretty smoothly from there and I was ready for the galaxies in Virgo and Coma Berenices by 10:00. I found my way through in about an hour and was ready to warm up in my Ford portable warming chamber and let the sky rotate to bring the objects in Ophiuchus and Scorpio into range. I hopped out and got a few objects every hour or so until I ran into a real problem. At about 3:00 it became apparent that the light from a waning crescent moon was just enough, when combined with ambient light pollution, to obliterate just about every star in the southern part of the sky that contained all of the remaining objects. I usually find objects by approximating the position with a telrad and then scanning under low power. Ideally I can use stars reasonably close to the object. At the end of the night I had to use Altair and Enif to triangulate on M72! The objects in Sagittarius and Scutum were not too hard, even though Sagittarius was in a tree. Once I found the first one I could just hop to the next. I couldn't find M55 and I did not even try for M75 or M30. I packed it in at 5:30 with a total of 107/110. A new personal best. I hear my pillow calling me so I gotta go. Yours, J. Bein