Get Ready -- Now Is The Time To Start Planning Your MM

[JayTee]

Greetings,

Every February I take it upon myself to remind folks that March is Messier Marathon month. This year the March new moon falls on March 24th so the weekend of the 22nd-23rd is your best bet. These observing dates are situated right in the heart of the best dates viewing window to bag all 110 Messiers in ONE night! Unfortunately, this chart applies to the northern hemisphere and if you are north of 36°latitude you won't be able to get all 110. BUT this shouldn't stop you from trying to view more Messiers in one night than you ever have before!!!

Here are three important websites to reference if you plan on attempting this feat. They will provide all the info you need to attempt to successfully accomplish the marathon.
https://www.universetoday.com/tag/messier-marathon/ (kind of old but still useful!)
http://www.messier.seds.org/xtra/marathon/marathon.html
http://calgary.rasc.ca/darksky/messierplanner.htm

If you can make a trip to a dark site for this weekend, you stand a much better chance of seeing as many Messiers as possible.

I have attempted the marathon 5 times and have yet to get all 110 objects. I've gotten 109 but never all 110 in one night. Of course, I will try again this year. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have on this subject or endeavor.

However much, if any, of this marathon viewing you accomplish don't forget to tell us about it either right back here or in the Messier Visual Reports forum.

Cheers,
JT

[Don Quixote]

Thank you JT for this reminder.
I enjoy thinking and planning for this as well.
Unfortunately...the skies have not cooperated with me. This year will be my third go at this.

[pakarinen]

I seriously doubt I could stay awake that long. However, I am looking forward to galaxy season. With luck, I'll be able to get to a dark site at least a couple of times. Last time I was in a Bortle 3 in the spring, the Leo Triplet hit me in the face like a brick. Good stuff!

[Dragonsfire]

That would be nice just not holding my breath for good weather

[helicon]

Hope the weather stays good for the attempt. Last year I had thoughts of trying it but I was clouded out.

[Bigzmey]

Thanks for the reminder JT! JT is is possible to get all 110 from Hawaii? I checked my SoCal location and I can't get a couple because they set down before it gets dark enough to resolve them.


For those considering it you don't need to stay up all night. You can do one block evening and another morning and sleep for a few hours in between.

[kt4hx]

While this is something I've never done, nor had a desire to do, there is a preferred order to the process of course. The first two and toughest are M74 and M77 because they are low in the western sky before astronomical darkness happens and one needs a low western horizon to access them. Our dark site does not have a low western horizon anyway. But while others are doing their MM, I hope to be busying myself chasing galaxies anyway, so I will be constructively engaged, provided conditions permit of course.

Here is one checklist that you could use to organize yourself:

marathon_order.pdf

(12.68 KiB) Downloaded 74 times

[pakarinen]

I have a copy of the MM guide book that walks through the observing order with Telrad finder charts and such. Don't remember the author, but I got mine at Half Price Books for around $10- $15. Could be a useful reference.

[JayTee]

The third link that I provided gives you a customizable planner. You can input your location and observing date (obviously), but the cool parts are that you can select which twilight to use, how high your horizons are, what features you want the subsequent table to display (image, R/T/S times, remarks, etc), and whose observing sequence do you want to use. There are 7 observing sequences from which to choose. You can also export this info as a .csv file, which I do, then drop into my spreadsheet which can also be used as an Astronomical League observing log to qualify for two of their awards. The spreadsheet also has a column that lists the page/s in the PSA (Pocket Sky Atlas) where each object can be found for an easier star-hopping reference. So, here's the planning website images.

And here's the spreadsheet:

2017 Messier Marathon Observing List and Log with PSA.xlsx

(30.15 KiB) Downloaded 79 times

Cheers,
JT

[seigell]

If the Weather Gods allow, I'll be doing another Photographic Messier Marathon.
I last attempted this in 2014 with an 8" f/4 Newt with a Canon T2i mounted on an AVX.
I found that I could do a Goto, find the target, let it settle and get Guiding Started, then capture 3-4 60sec Exposures and keep pace with the MM Sequence.
I captured 58 Objects before the clouds rolled in...

This time, I've the choice of an 4.5" f/7.5 APO or a 10.5" f/5 Imaging Cassegrain with a ASI2600 mounted on a CGEM-DX. With PlateSolving, I might be able to capture 4-6 60sec Exposures each Target.