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Observing report for the 2001 Messier marathon in Ohio. I'll keep this short. Jeff, Larry, Rodger, Don, and Myself went to a site in OHIO that was a reclaimed strip mine. Not a light in sight. Huntington was far enough away that the light didn't hamper the marathon. We arrived just before sunset and had the scopes up in time for the event. Jeff, however, was astrophotographing so we had 20 or so Messier objects observed by the time he was shooting. Scopes at the event: 20" Obsession, AP 135, Celestron 8" orange tube, Fuji Binos, the club cave equatorial, and a TV-101. I was very fortunate and found so many that I'll only list the ones I missed. I found 40 last year and was shooting for 60 as my goal for 2001. I followed a list I downloaded from the internet that began with the first ones to set and ended up with the last ones to rise. I started with a few easy ones such as M31, M42 and M45. then I began from the begining. First on the list was M77. I located this around 7:50pm The next two, M74 and M33, were very elusive. I struggled with these for about 15 min. then moved on. The night went on very methodically picking them off one at a time and hearing the occasional, "Found one" in the background. From time to time I left my scope to look at the other views available. I think Rodger and I were on a mission to nail as many as possible. We had met the previous night at the HHS dome and practiced some early Messier hunting until the clouds moved in. It got very cold in the middle of the night. Frost was clinging to all our maps and I had to keep my inkpen in my pocket because it didn't work well in the cold. Don't know if the ink was freezing or the paper. It's about 2:30 am now and M39 is giving me trouble. The method I used to search most of the objects was a combination of Star charts, cheat notes I made myself, and a wide lens. I figure Messier was trying to list comet looking things with ancient optics so if I put a wide lens on my scope and see something fuzzy It's probably it. I would put on the power and verify an object. During the virgo cluster, I found all kinds of fuzzy objects and having a hard time verifying them. Thanks to Rodger and Jeff for showing me the appendix in the back of my sky atlas and an article in Sky and Telescope. After taking their advice I had picked all of the Virgo Messiers in about half an hour. It was cold and I made a couple of trips to the car heater to warm up my frozen toes. Larry had left around 2am with I beleive 30 ish objects found. The last time I was in my car I was tallying up M's found and compared them to my list of M's for my certificate that I bring with me any time I view. I realized I only needed one to complete my certificate. M39. But I missed that one earlier. I looked at the clock. 5:30. I only had a few minutes before the sun would begin to wipe out the sky. Within 10 min I found it, verified it with my James O'meara book, and had Rodger verify. Because of my last car warming I missed the last few, including, M15, M2, M72, M73, and M30. I finished the evening with an unofficial total of 103 objects found and observed. Rodger logged 97. I still am unsure if I need to find 102 because the book I was using stated that it was the same as M101, a duplicate find. We left the site around 6:45 am and noted the wierd crop circles that we left in the field of frozen grass. The TV-101 with the red dot finder was so easy to use. I don't see how I could have found so many with any other scope. I still don't understand how Rodger could find 97 Messiers when his scope showed so many other confusing NGC Galaxies. I'm still thawing . Dave T.
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