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Constellations:
First Attempt at a Marathon

10" f/5.63 telescope,
20mm Nagler eyepiece (71.5x)
Friday, March 3, 2000

This is a departure from my normal article , but I had so much fun that it seemed right to share it with you.

First off let me explain that my first try at this was a spur of the moment attempt driven by the need to try and a real need to get out under the stars with a telescope again. I made the decision to go out Friday night, based on the weather report that predicted increasing clouds for Saturday the 4th. After being rained out for the last two years I was determined to at least make a try this year. Thursday night I worked until after midnight so that I wouldn't have to work Friday night (I really recommend that you get a good night's sleep before you try a marathon) so I was a bit tired by the time I headed to the hills.

I picked our Hwy 4 site for my try since it has a low western horizon and a good southern view. If I had made it to dawn I don't think that I could have gotten M30--in fact I am sure of that. I went up by myself solo and found this to be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand I had no obstructions from other scopes nearby or distractions while trying to locate an object. This last part is more important for non-tracking telescopes than most people imagine. With a non-tracking telescope, if you stop to talk to someone in the middle of a search, your last object drifts out of the field of view and you have to start over again to get back to that point. On the other hand if your marathon is going well, you spend a fair amount of time waiting for objects to rise above the horizon and it sure would be nice to have friends to talk to during this time.

I got to the site a little after 7 p.m. and did the fastest set up and collimation I have ever done in my life (laser collimators are really the way to go). For my references I used The Night Sky Planisphere (from Orion), Sky Atlas 2000.0 (Wil Tirion), The Messier Objects (Stephen James O'Meara), Sky & Telescope March 2000 issue (for the check list and order) and one chart showing the western horizon that I printed from my computer using "The Sky" software program.

I used a computer generated star chart of the western horizon to get the location of the planets. Saturn, Jupiter and Mars were in a perfect location and bright enough to be seen through the light pollution and haze. I was worried about being able to find the first group of Messier objects. The planets made fantastic sign posts for locating them.

Let the Marathon Begin

M77 was my first object and my printed chart showed it to be just above and to the left of Kaffaljidhma in Cetus and this was located on line with Jupiter. I could just make out the star so I used the Telrad to position the scope and nailed it without any other adjustment. My spirits jumped to the stratosphere. I can't explain the feeling of hitting that first object but it sure is great. M74 was located 1/3 of the way from Jupiter to Mars and about the same distance to the north. I used the Telrad to get close then used small sweeps with the scope until I hit it. I think I actually jumped in the air and yelled "Yes!!" when I got this one.

Lesson 1.  Use the widest field-of-view eyepiece that you own.

For a marathon, you are not studying any of the objects so you do not need high power at all, and the wide field can make the difference between a successful search or dismal despair.

M33 was the next object on the list. I could make out the constellation of Triangulum pointing down to the horizon, so I swung the scope over to the area that I thought M33 should be in and started to sweep, but I couldn't find it. At this point I learned the second and third lessons of the night.

Lesson 2.  When sweeping the telescope from the eyepiece, stop and check the Telrad view from time to time.

You may find, like I did, that you are now in a completely different part of the sky from where you want to be. The third lesson came after three failed attempts to locate M33:

Lesson 3.  Think about how you found the object the last time you looked at it.

In my case, I always look at M33 after I look at the Andromeda galaxy M31. M31 is big and bright so I grabbed my binoculars and started sweeping the sky until I found it and got my bearings, then I switched to my telescope and found it in the finder scope. At this point I checked off M31, M32 and M110. Now that I had M31 in my scope and I could see Triangulum, I could now see right where I had messed up my search for M33. I moved my scope to the right location and bingo! - there was M33.

The next object was M52 in Cassiopeia. I could see the constellation and the location I needed to search but I could also see the tree branches in the way. The solution consisted of my star chart case, a motorcycle tie-down strap (always carried in my truck) and a short hike to the tree. I hooked the branch with the strap and used the case to weigh it down (it took a couple of attempts to get the right branch).

A better/easier solution, since M52 is visible in binoculars, would have been to walk down the road, nailed it and gone on, but my adrenaline was running at about 130% so I nailed it with the scope. From M52, M103 was easy to hit.

M76, the "Little Dumbbell," has never been an easy hit for me, but Glenn Yeoman helped me nail it one time in this area of the sky so I used his method and a little sweeping and finally nailed it (remember lesson 2 when sweeping). Next was an object that I had not gotten before, M34. I used the "Sky Atlas" and found it with no problem.

From this point there is a stretch of real easy hits that are placed in a good part of the sky. Since I have hit M45, M79, M42, M43, M78, M1, M35, M37, M36 and M38 many times before, I made it through just about as fast as I could move the scope.

One of the major reasons that I wanted to get my telescope out, was at the open cluster's M41, M93, M47, M46, M50 and M48 (I have recently written about M48 and M50 but this was the first chance that I have had to test the hops). I used my Sky Atlas and Telrad to hit these, and lesson one proved its worth again.

The last of the early evening hits are in Cancer. M49, the Beehive Cluster is naked-eye visible at Hwy 4 so it was easy to hit and you can see M67 in a finder scope as you sweep south.

After M67, I took a much deserved break. At this time I also noticed that everything was soaking wet, and it was only about 9:00 p.m. If this had been a regular star party I think I would have packed it in because of the dew. Instead I wiped everything down and stuck my charts back into plastic. When I got back to my telescope I noticed that my eyepiece was fogging up (this is really bad when you're heading into galaxyland. One trick to stop eyepiece fogging is to put it in a pocket inside of your jacket (I recommend putting on your lens caps if your pockets have lists in them). My finder scope and Telrad were also covered in dew. At the last ATM meeting one member gave me a 7-hour chemical heat pad; I used this to warm up the finders and this worked really well at keeping the dew to a minimum.

On to Leo. My favorite objects are galaxies so I looked forward to this section.

Lesson 4.  Make sure you have a book with good pictures.

I used The Messier Objects and I used it much earlier than at this point, but it is a must for positively identifying the galaxies in this section. I have done a lot of observing in Leo and Ursa Major for my articles so M95, M96, M105, M65, M66, M82, M81, M97, M108 and M109 came in like clockwork. When I got to M40 I found that it was not shown on my Sky Atlas so I had to go to my book to find it (special note: the star charts in the book are not shown in the same scale).

I have not spent much time looking at Canes Venatici, so it took a little while to hit M94 and M63. M51 was next and pretty easy since I look at it a lot along with M101. After M101 I went to my charts for M102 in Draco and found M101 and M102 in the same location, only the magazine article had it listed as being NGC 5866. It's important to know this if you are going for 110 objects.

M53, a Globular Cluster in Coma Berenices is next, along with the galaxy M64. These are not to hard once you pickout the constellation. M3 on the other hand is out in the middle of nowhere and binoculars help here.

After M3 I dropped down to the tail of Hydra for M68, then went looking for M83. Even though my Planesphere showed it as above the horizon, I couldn't even find any guide stars to I took a 15 minute break before I tried again. This was the first sign of things to come, I could not make out any of the tail of Hydra and the southern stars in Corvus looked fuzzy. I gave up on M83 at this point, hoping that it may rise above the haze later. I hit M104 then M61 and M49 on the way to Denebola in Leo.

From Denebola I made two attempts at the Virgo Cluster from west to east. Both time I lost track, so I went back to the third lesson. Since I first went through the area from east to west I used that route again. Another advantage of this route is that my book is also in this order. It was 11:35 p.m. when I hit the last galaxy in the cluster.

When I stepped back from my scope and looked around, I noticed that the sky was gone in the south and the fog was rising fast in the east. Since I was losing sky at an alarming rate, I grabbed my binoculars and nailed M13 and M92, then M5. While I was looking at a very fuzzy M5, I watched it fade from view in the fog.

With the sky getting worse I decided to call it a night after only 69 objects. At first I was a bit sad while I packed up my scope, but as I started my truck I thought back on all the fun I had racing across the sky looking for objects. It was worth it. Anyway, if I had gotten all of them this year what would I do next year?

Happy Star-Hopping...Eric

Copyrighted © 2000 by Stockton Astronomical Society
Lasted Updated: 12/3/2000
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