Messier Marathon 2000

In 2000, Full Moon will occur on March 20, 2000, and thus make the best Messier Marathon time unavailable. On the other hand, this will provide two nice opportunities to observe most of the 110 Messier objects, around New Moons on March 6.2 and April 4.8, respectively, so that observers will have a primary weekend on April 1 and a secondary on March 11; it is recommended to try the timely first, secondary opportunity also. This year, there will be a considerably good chance to combine the Messier marathon with an all-planet marathon, i.e. you can observe all solar-system planets during this night, on both dates. As for the time of this writing, the only comets which will become brighter than mag 14.0 at least for one of the two possible Messier Marathon weekends are listed below, based on the JPL List of Currently Visible Comets. Famous Hale-Bopp will still be the brightest during the second opportunity, but only be visible from considerably southern latitudes, of course. C/1999 S4 (LINEAR) will be an evening twilight challenge for the first date and invisible at the second, while C/1999 T1 (McNaught-Hartley) will be an evening twilight challenge at both dates but for southern observers only. So we are left with only one mag 13.5 comet which is easy to find: C/1999 H3 (LINEAR), but stay tuned for possible new discoveries.
Comet		   	      RA (2000.0) Dec  mag	  RA (2000.0) Dec  mag
			  	  March 12, 2000	     April 1, 2000

C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) 04:32.9 -73:06 13.4 04:40.3 -71:37 13.5 C/1999 H3 (LINEAR) 12:53.3 +42:19 13.5 12:04.6 +42:18 13.7 C/1999 S4 (LINEAR) 01:32.5 +25:45 13.2 - C/1999 T1 (McNaught-Hartley) 01:44.2 -34:22 14.1 02:05.8 -32:49 13.8
Also, meteors from various showers may occur, and depending on your location, you may be able to observe the International Space Station, ISS or - perhaps a last time - the Russian Space Station Mir.

Messier Marathon Events 2000

The following Messier Marathon Events have been announced: Please email me any further scheduled Messier Marathon 2000 events for announce here.

If you have undertaken, or participated in, a Messier Marathon, 2000 or earlier, if not already done so, please email me your or your group's results, or the link to your results page, for inclusion in our Messier Marathon Results page!

  • Also note Sky Publishing's Messier Marathon Contest.


    Marathon Home

    Hartmut Frommert (spider@seds.org)
    Christine Kronberg (smil@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)

    [SEDS] [MAA] [Home] [Indexes]

    Last Modification: 6 Apr 2000, 8:20 MET