Sun 3/18/2007: MBMMM

by Marek Cichanski

For some reason that I can't fathom right now, I scheduled my Winter Quarter field trips on the same weekend as the Messier Marathon. (Think Much?) Can't for the life of me recall why I did that. This, of course, guaranteed that there would be fabulous clear skies for the Friday and Saturday nights, when I was at home. But hey, at least it benefitted all the other marathoners, and I honestly am glad about that. A deposit in the karma bank is always a good idea.

After two days of leading field trips, a Sunday evening at Montebello was just what the doctor ordered. Sleep was definitely a secondary priority. So, I headed up the hill with the same rig I'd used the last time I was at MB: A 6" Russian MCT on a Losmandy G-11.

Part of the fun was playing with the old-school setting circles some more, but my main goal was to try a MBMMM (Montebello Mini Messier Marathon). I was curious to see how many Messiers I could bag from MB during marathon season.

The MBMMM has some interesting constraints. The main one, of course, is that the eastern half of the sky is generally pretty bright, unless it's a Black Cloud Night. Additionally, the permits allow us to stay until 2 am. This meant that a lot of the summer objects just wouldn't have risen by the time I had to leave, so I knew that it couldn't possibly be a complete marathon. But I was curious to see how many I could get. My informal goal was 55 objects, i.e. half of the list.

To my pleasant surprise, I bagged 69 Messiers, by my slightly fuzzy recollection. This was a crude, whack-em-and-stack-em observing effort, but it was still a lot of fun. No notes, no descriptions, just banging 'em out.

I used Machholz's marathon guide, left over from 2005 when I did the marathon with my 18" Obsession. On that occasion, I star-hopped to each object, and wrote an NGC-style description for each one. I got 109 of 'em that time, M30 was a dealbreaker. This time around, I was just using the old-school setting circles, taking a quick look, and moving on. In fact, when I got to the springtime galaxies, I wasn't even looking at the Messier numbers, I was just looking at the coordinates. Talk about grinding 'em out! Last night I was the "Joey Knish", or maybe the Michael Mizrachi of observing.

George Feliz and his friend Pete were there for the first few hours, and it was fun hearing them go through some AmAstro 101. Neat! George also helped me a lot in my efforts to bag M74, even going so far as to give me a detailed description of the field stars and to let me look through his scope at the field.

From Machholz's marathon order, I got as far as M57. I think that's Machholz's object #71, IIRC. I only had averted imagination views of M74 and M33, in the twilight. One of M52 and M103 (not sure which one) was a headscratcher, I wondered if I was on the right field. But otherwise, everything was a solid bag, so I think my total was around 69 objects. For a Sunday night at MB, I'm fairly pleased with that.

Conditions turned out to be quite nice, to my pleased amazement. Almost no cirrus after sunset, or at least until about 1 am, when it was clear that I ought to throw in the towel. Fog had been hitting the ridge hard for two days, and a very scary tongue of it pushed through the notch to the south of MB, but it settled and I didn't get hit. There were occasional chilly breezes, especially after midnight, but mostly it was pretty calm. And most amazing of all, no dew! I was astonished. It was a pretty successful hand of OI Poker.

So, bottom line, this marathon-season 'consolation prize' was really nice. Good conditions, good company early in the night, "Fortress of Solitude" later in the night, fun with setting circles, and a solid 2/3 of the Messier list bagged. Life is good!

Marek S