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The
Messier Marathon on March 29th was another super event, with
near perfect weather. I’m
not sure how we lucked out two weekends in a row on the weather, but I
certainly heard no complaints. We
had over 25 telescopes in action on the observing field, plus the
Society owned Isengard and C-11 telescopes running to capacity.
We had at least 36 people sign the GNTO logbook.
With
the excellent conditions several people succeeded in observing 108 of
the 110 objects. In
addition, the imaging team of Rebecca Purvis, Mark and Elaine Kroska
managed to image 94 Messier objects! Anyone
who has tried to image objects in rapid succession will recognize that
this is a remarkable achievement. These
results are largely due to all the work Mark has put into configuring
the imaging system and making it more easy to use.
Thanks Mark!
I
had asked for folks to turn in their object tallies, so here is a list
of results from those who observed from GNTO.
Larry Cash and John Laning were tied with 108 objects.
Larry missed M74 and M77 while John missed M30 and M74.
John used manual methods to locate all of his objects, while
Larry used his NGCMAX to find about 60 of the objects.
Lee Walsh used manual techniques to find 100 objects, missing
only M33, M32, M72, M74, M75, M77, M102 and M110. With the help of Barry
Spletzer, Clestyna Brozek caught 98 objects. Our thanks go to Barry
Spletzer, who wrote a great lead article in last month’s newsletter
and prepared charts and checklists for the event. Barry was on hand to
help anyone that wanted assistance in finding or identifying objects.
As
noted early, the team of the Kroskas and Rebbeca Purvis imaged 94
objects. Mark indicated
that if it had not been for a slight glitch with the telescope mount
that caused “motor stalled” errors, they probably would have got all
but M74, which was hidden by the main dome building.
Other
GNTO participants included Ray Collins, who found several dozen objects,
Judy Stanley with 18 objects, and Dale Murray with 14 objects using only
binoculars. Obviously,
there were many other folks with great results that did not report in.
I did get some off-site results from Mark Nagrodsky with 50
objects and Mark Rumsey, who tried on March 8/9 and again on March 30/31
when he missed only M74, which set in evening twilight.
Not
everyone at GNTO made a marathon out of it, but all had a good time.
Barry Spletzer wondered if we shouldn’t try a summer marathon,
where we would get as many as possible, or perhaps have a specific time
of the evening as a cut-off. I
think this sounds like a great idea, if you agree, please let Barry or
me know.
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