From: Collin Smith [mailto:CollinofAlabama@cox.net]
Sent: Saturday, April 01, 2006 1:28 PM
Subject: Messier Marathon Misery

I called Curt back after he left a message on my voicemail. Yes, I was coming, though I was just 6 blocks from my house, 15 minutes late, and about 7 miles from the rendezvous point. But they waited patiently and we caravaned down to the cotton farm just east of O'Donnell, about an hour south of Lubbock's bright city lights.
I got my first omen this might not be a perfect evening as soon as we arrived. I had donated my time for a Lubbock Chorale fund-raiser -- a custom tour of the heavens for the lucky bid winner. Through a series of miscommunications (the woman who won the bid has a name similar to an active astronomer in our party), I had thought she was in our caravan. I pulled up the rear behind Club VP Tom Heisey in his RV to make sure he made it down without mishap. Everyone else zipped ahead at the 70 mph clip they could afford (West Texas' open roads are a pleasantry). When we got to the observation site, the bid-winner was nowhere to be found and we had missed each other at the rendezvous. Crumbs, Chief!
The clouds were quite ominous even as the night began. We would be sorely rewarded if the clouds didn't break. Another portent to the fate awaiting us. The Messier Marathon began with a whimper alright. The clouds had breaks in them, but they were pretty solid along the north and western skies. Patrice Fay did manage to eeck out M103 with an 18" Obsession, but nobody else saw it and it retreated back into the murk in absolute seclusion, along with M31, etc. I counted the bright Pleades as my first sighted M object. The 7:50 entry for M45 provides some idea of the lack of clarity the early evening offered. Heisey quipped he caught PLENTY of nebulosity in the Pleades!
However, the clouds did begin to thin, and as the night's blackness overcame the fading western glow, the winds parted the clouds admitting many more heavenly beauties, Messier and otherwise, into our field of view. However, the gusts also bore down on us, making the evening feel much colder than it actually was. We naïvely hoped the Fates would have mercy upon us as the heat gave way to a cooler night, a hoped for respite from the slow atmospheric grinding.
Throughout the 8th hour, I nabbed the Orion, Taurus, western Ursa Major, Gemini and Auriga Messiers. The 9th hour took care of Canis Major, Puppis, and Monoceros M objects. The 10th hour reeled in M48 and Cancer's Messiers while the 11th took care of Leo, eastern Ursa Major and all but one of Canes Venatici's. By now, the wind, which had been forecast at only 10-20 mph was taking its toll. Not only did we sustain constant, unrelenting 20 mph winds, they occasionally gusted to 25 mph. The biting cold these gusts spawn above 3000' in March can take the cheer out of a fella. Especially after 4½ hours.
To give you an idea of how bad the winds were, I had REALLY wanted to compare some new eyepieces I just purchased, especially on Saturn and Mars. But Saturn was blowing about so in everyone's scope -- including my VERY stable 6" F/6 dob -- that there would be no eyepiece comparisons that night.
In the 12th hour I managed to uncover M102 in Draco, an old familiar Sombrero I've always enjoyed checking out (hey, this is Texas!), M68 on the other side of Corvus, and ended my session snagging the last conquest in Canes Venatici, the beautiful globular M3.
At 12:20, the decision was made to go to sleep and awaken a couple of hours later to finish things up. We had nipped around the Coma-Virgo cluster, but no one had systematically assaulted this wealth of Messiers (and NGCs) yet. The thinking was that folks would feel more like it after a couple of uncomfortable hours of rest in a car. Hmmm. Was this a good idea pour moi? Two friends of Patrice's and new-comers to our astronomy group, Whitney and Jemina, settled down to a "Pride and Prejudice" DVD in a laptop in the back of a large SUV. The back hatch was open, and as everyone else went to his/her vehicle or RV, I gravitated toward these young ladies, as I'm inclined to do. They were focused on the movie, but I was just grateful to be out of the merciless wind. I felt like an animal, finally out of the elements. But then I began to notice the smell of dirt in my hair. This was, after all, a cotton field, and we were, after all, in the midst of constant 20-plus mph winds. Of course parts of this field had been blown all over us! Then my thoughts turned to my beloved 6" dobsonian. This is as good a scope as I've ever owned, and it was getting battered with fast moving dust? No way, José. ¡Bastante!
With everyone else in their vehicles, I packed my beloved optics, started the car and drove northward. Foregone -- the Virgo-Coma bevy of beauties and the Summer Sagittarian feast. But I had lost my appetite and wanted a warm bed.
The high moment came at 9:28 when Patrice 'discovered' NGC 2438 in the 18" Obsession. Man, is it fun to look through one of those beasts. You can 'discover' all kinds of things in one of those. We christened NGC 2438 the 'Patrice Nebula' In Curt Pfarr's 8" Meade SCT the same nebula was also evident. Folks said they could even see it in my 6", and there was something there, but I think they were being a bit generous with their compliments. I nabbed some nice Messier NGC companions - 1907 beside M38, 3384 with M105, 3628 & M66, 4449 & M106. But there were some problems, too. First, I need to do some more research concerning M40. A binary? Come on Charles, donnez-moi un break! I'm practically the Lubbock expert on Andromeda, and we missed all that autumnal excellence with the skies cloudy early. C'est la vie.
My girlfriend, Neetu, noted how dusty my papers and books were on Sunday. May be time to schedule another mirror cleaning/collimation session at one of the monthly meetings. As I recall, this month's will be the floor for Travis Brown's NASA retired engineer-friend. May might be a good time for this. Hopefully the dust will have died down by then, too!
Obviously, we'll have to try this again sometime. This Saturday I'm out of town, the moon will blight the Messiers and all other DSOs after that, and I've got concerts here in town the following two weeks, but since I've begun the list, I intend to finish them, or maybe start on the Herschel 400? Wow, now that sounds like a nice project, doesn't it?
CDS

From: Collin Smith [mailto:CollinofAlabama@cox.net]
Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2006 1:38 AM
Subject: Messier Marathon run

Folks,
South Plains Astronomy Club people are meeting this Saturday, March 25th at 6PM at the Town and Country on South Hwy 87 & 1585. From there we will caravan down to a cotton farm located just east of O'Donnell to do some star gazing.
In the 1770's, two Frenchmen, Charles Messier and his younger friend Pierre Mechain, began to catalog "non-comets". Messier was a comet hunter but kept finding objects that looked like comets, "nebulae" that stayed fixed in the sky and never changed. The Messier Catalog, compiled in 1782, is one of the most famous group of celestial objects a budding astronomer will aspire to observe, and includes a long list of supernova remnants, stellar nurseries, star clusters and galaxies - M1 to M110.
The last weeks of March/first weeks of April provide a unique opportunity to see the entire Messier catalog in one evening. These "Messier Marathons" are very common for amateur astronomy groups the world over. The marathon requires an observer to stay up all night long, but the skies, if clear, will reveal the entire catalog for these few weeks only. Please come to at least begin this odyssey.
One may also wish to print out these two guides to the Virgo-Coma cluster region, which I've been warned is one of the more difficult sections to navigate given the abundance of objects in this area.
http://www.cloudynights.com/item.php?item_id=497
http://www.cloudynights.com/item.php?item_id=1059
Print the pdf versions of the above articles for better printer fidelity to the text. Call me if you need more information.
Hope to see you all there,
CDS