Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 09:20:04 -0800 (PST) From: Swapneel Kore Subject: 2002 Messier Marathon results Hi, Mr Girish Vaze from India had earlier posted to you our intention to attempt the 2002 Messier Marathon from India. On March 15th, Girish Vaze and me (Swapneel Kore) successfully attempted the messier marathon. We logged 106 objects. Our report is attached to this mail. Swapneel __________________________________________________ We attempted the 2002 Messier marathon on the night of 15th March from Sinhagad (73.1 deg E, 18.4 deg N, elevation 1290 m). We reached the site at 6:05 in the evening. It was quite cloudy when we reached there and for some time we thought that we might have to abort the session. The clouds then appeared to be clearing and we decided to go ahead with the session. The site is actually a 1000 year old fort, 30 km south of the city of Pune and we were going to setup of our custom built 13.1 inch f/4.7 reflector from the car park. The lights from the city significantly affected the sky conditions towards the north and nort-west. Unfortunately the car park is not an ideal site since the fort itself obstructs a small part of the western sky. We set up the scope at a place which we determined would be best placed for observing the western sky. We decided that we would shift the scope when we would start observing the rest of the sky. The clouds had cleared quite a bit by that time, with some traces of them remaining on the horizons. We started observations when it was still twilight. We could locate M31 at that time, but were unable to see the companions M32 and M110 since it was still light. We could also spot M33 just after that. We waited till it was darker, but by that time M33 and M31 had sunk to a clouded and hazy part of the horizon. We quickly logged the other difficult objects in that region including M52 and M77. M74 could not be logged since by the time it was dark enough to observe it, it was behind the obstruction on the western horizon. Once we had covered the difficult objects in the western sky, we had a much easier time locating all the objects after that since we had a very powerful scope. In fact, this very fact caused us some difficulty observing the Messier objects in the Virgo Cluster as we were able to see a lot of objects not in the Messier list and identification of the correct Messier objects became difficult. We still were able to complete the Virgo cluster in a span of just 25 minutes. We roughly followed Dan Machholz's order of objects. After 1:30 in the night, we caught a quick nap of 2 hrs until 3:30. After that we started with the southern objects in scorpio, sagittarius etc. which again we covered with ease. We had some difficulty again catching the objects around capricorn. We were unable to confirm M30 because of cloud cover although we saw hints through binoculars. M30 did not rise above the clouds until sunrise. In total we logged 106 of the 110 Messier objects. The ease in observing the Messier objects allowed us to observer some other non-Messier objects such as Omega Centauri, Eta-Carinae (Keyhole Nebula) and NGC5128. We could also see quite a few NGC galaxies in Leo and Virgo. We went through the Messier marathon in not the best observing conditions. We were affected by clouds, haze and light pollution from Pune city. Though having a scope with large aperture helped, we feel that the Messier marathon can be executed with good success if planned carefully. Knowing the positions of as many objects as possible by study of star maps before hand goes a long way in being able to successfuly complete the marathon. Observation Log: M. No. Time ------ ----- M 77 8:20 M 33 8:00 M 31 7:55 M 52 8:15 M 103 8:45 M 76 8:40 M 34 9:05 M 45 9:00 M 79 10:00 M 42 9:20 M 43 9:20 M 78 10:04 M 1 9:58 M 35 9:00 M 37 9:00 M 36 9:00 M 38 9:00 M 41 10:05 M 93 10:06 M 47 10:13 M 46 10:13 M 50 10:20 M 48 10:30 M 44 10:33 M 67 10:35 M 95 10:40 M 96 10:40 M 105 10:40 M 65 10:37 M 66 10:37 M 81 9:17 M 82 9:17 M 97 9:50 M 108 9:50 M 109 10:50 M 40 10:50 M 106 11:11 M 94 11:06 M 63 10:56 M 51 10:56 M 101 10:30 M 102 11:37 M 53 11:44 M 64 11:45 M 3 11:53 M 98 | M 99 | M 100 | M 85 | M 86 | M 87 | M 89 | M 90 |- 12:00 to 12:25 M 88 | M 91 | M 58 | M 59 | M 60 | M 49 | M 61 12:33 M 104 12:28 M 68 12:35 M 83 12:45 M 5 12:51 M 13 1:15 M 92 1:20 M 57 3:35 M 56 3:40 M 29 3:42 M 39 4:55 M 27 4:57 M 71 4:56 M 107 4:00 M 12 3:45 M 10 3:50 M 14 3:55 M 9 4:02 M 4 4:03 M 80 4:04 M 19 4:05 M 62 4:05 M 6 4:10 M 7 4:11 M 11 4:25 M 26 4:25 M 16 | M 17 | M 18 | M 24 | M 25 | M 23 |- 4:25 to 4:40 M 21 | M 20 | M 8 | M 28 | M 22 | M 69 4:40 M 70 4:42 M 54 4:45 M 55 5:10 M 75 5:12 M 15 5:20 M 2 5:38 M 72 5:50 M 73 5:30 Did not observe: M 74 M 32 M 110 M 30