What | A BSAS sponsored Messier Marathon! This is an event held during March of each year near the new Moon where amateur astronomers across the world try to see as many of the 110 Messier objects as possible between sunset and sunrise. Charles Messier was a Frenchman who was trying to find comets and wanted a list of objects in the sky that were known NOT to be comets. Messier never achieved much fame for the comets he found, but he did become very famous for his list of deep-sky objects. The Messier object list consists of some of the best and brightest deep-sky objects available to observe with small optics. The list includes a supernova remnant (M1), nebulae, open and globular star clusters, galaxies, a double star (M40), and a small asterism (M73). Asterisms are star formations that are not constellations, i.e. the big dipper is the largest and best-known asterism. M102 is a repetitive mistake of galaxy M101, but nearby galaxy NGC5866 has pretty much been accepted as a substitute. |
When | Saturday/Sunday, March 5-6 from an hour before sunset until you have declared yourself a winner by seeing everything you wanted to in one night. This will occur at sunrise on Sunday morning for some of us. Weather cancellations will be made by way of the Yahoo! TNAstronomy group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tnastronomy/ by noon on March 5th. We will go out for 5-6 hours if the weather is clear at the start even if the forecast is for clouds increasing overnight. |
Where | The Water Valley Overlook at mile 411.8 of Natchez Trace Parkway. Directions to this site are on our BSAS website at http://bsasnashville.com. Drive time is about an hour from the Adventure Science Center, but this site is pretty dark and has one of the most important ingredients for success at a Messier Marathon - low horizons! |
Why | Fun, fellowship, learning, confidence building… There are many different reasons to do a Messier Marathon, but the best one I can think of is to learn to become proficient at finding stellar objects with your own personal equipment whether that entails eyeballs, binoculars, or a telescope. This ability can be used later to earn Astronomical League Awards or to share your newly acquired sky knowledge by finding deep-sky objects quickly at our society's many public outreach activities. |
How | First off, beginners are welcome! Anyone can participate. I expect many people to show up and only stay for a few hours. Others may stay longer and observe 20-30 objects. A few of us have found as many as 8-10 Messier objects using only our eyes from the fairly dark Natchez Trace site. At least half of the Messier objects are visible in small 50mm binoculars so don't feel left out if you don't have a telescope. For those wishing to try observing all 110 objects, this is truly a race between you and the sun. Some very friendly competition has erupted in the past, but it quickly dissipates back to sharing views in each other's telescopes when time permits.
I will be supplying hot water, hot chocolate mix, and hot cups throughout the night. Bring anything else you would like to drink or contribute to a snack table. The first thing you should do is to select and prepare your equipment. Make use of binoculars if you have them. These offer a very wide-field capability for high-speed searching. Clean your eyepieces. Some objects may be dim enough to appear as a smudge on an eyepiece. I suggest using only two eyepieces -- one for very low-power wide-field capability and one that yields about 100X magnification. I would suggest at least a 4" diameter telescope with 6"-8" preferred. I would also suggest that anyone doing the marathon manually use a scope with an overall focal length under 1200mm for it's increased field-of-view capability. Other scopes will work though! One of the most important pieces of equipment you could bring to a Messier Marathon is Harvard Pennington's book, "The Year-Round Messier Marathon Field Guide". The charts in this book are made to work with a Telrad, or an 8x50 finder scope. Another good reference during a marathon is two plastic-coated flip chart books by Brent Watson called, "The Messier Objects". These are also made specifically for a Telrad, but will work with any finder device. A Telrad is a unity-power locating device that projects a red-illuminated bulls-eye pattern on a clear plastic lens that you point at the sky and look through. They are very handy for setting up go-to type systems as well. A Rigel finder is very similar, but works better on smaller telescopes. Any charts you bring should include the entire Messier list. I will have a table set up for persons who need additional reference materials to look things up. Please leave the materials on the table for others to use and either get a mental picture or make a quick sketch. Things to bring include: lots of extra clothing layers, munchies, drinks, chemical hand warmers, fresh batteries, red lights (to read charts), binoculars, a telescope, your favorite eyepieces, charts, books, paper, pencil, or a pen that works in cold weather, anti-dew heaters, and dew shields. You WILL need anti-dew equipment to go all night like this. You can purchase this equipment from many sources on the Internet or you can make it yourself. The second thing to do is to simulate a mini-marathon in your backyard for an hour or two on several nights before the marathon. Training is important. Remember that each person will have to average about 10 objects per hour to complete the marathon before sunrise. I would suggest trying to get to a pace of 15/hour to be able to take plenty of breaks. That's one object every four minutes. You must train to be successful in the first hour of the marathon. This is possibly the most stressful time, unless you have practiced. By training ahead of time, you will get a feel for the pace you need to keep and you will know where to look for the objects and what to expect when you find them. M74 and M77 can really be tough to locate early on. M33 is so huge that is also can be difficult. You may be looking right at it and not even notice it if you haven't seen it before. These objects may not have seemed hard at other times of the year when they're high overhead, but now you're trying to locate them near the horizon at sunset! Another area of concern for most people is near midnight when they arrive at the Virgo cluster of galaxies. The problem here is that there are so many galaxies so close together, that it becomes hard to identify each one individually. The Messier Marathon Field Guide or some computer software can be your best friend in accomplishing this task. The final drive is near sunrise when we should all have our scopes pointed east waiting for the next object to clear the horizon. There is a preferred sequence for finding the objects. I will pass out a list at the marathon for checking off of the objects, but you can get a list at http://www.messiermarathon.com or you can obtain a list with pictures at http://www.maa.agleia.de/Messier/E/Xtra/Marathon/marath3.html. These lists are in order of setting times. It is by no means mandatory to adhere to the sequence though. Make sure to get plenty of sleep on the nights leading up to the marathon. I would suggest that you consider staying up late the night before the marathon and then sleep until early afternoon before getting ready to go. Arrive at the Natchez Trace site early to setup. Remember to have fun! It is very exciting to see many beautiful deep-sky objects in one night and it's extremely rewarding to snag them your self. We should be packing up and heading for home (or the nearest Waffle House) by 5:30-6am. I'll see you there! |