I setup on the 3rd floor deck at the apartment in Provincetown. I knew it would be wobbly and I knew I'd have light pollution problems but I figured I'd give it a try, why not? I had a black fleece to use as a hood if I needed it.
Sirius was the first star out, of course, and then I think Procyon and soon I had several. Sadly, I did not have Polaris! I eventually found it binoculars and this let me see it naked eye. I moved the tripod and stood behind it, eyeballing Polaris. I never did it through the bore, I was in a hurry, I knew that some dusk objects would be difficult, I was especially worried about M77.
So althought that wasn't the first object on my list, I used McNish's site to print out my lists, using the Phil Harrington, Astronomy 2002 sequence.
The horizon was still in twilight when I slewed to M77. Now I knew my Goto could be off, especially my first one of the evening, but I couldn't even seen Menkar, so I knew it would be bad. For some reason I put the hood on, then I pulled up my chair and waited. I probably spent about 15-20 minutes looking for M77. Sometimes I'd stay in the same spot, sometimes I'd nudge the hand controller to move the scope a bit. When I could see the power lines through the finder scope I knew I should give up. The sky still wasn't dark yet so I moved on.
M42 and M43 were the first objects. Well, M45 was but I wanted to bag at least one naked eye so I knew I'd have to wait for that one. For almost all objects I was using my Garrett Optical 30mm wide angle 2" eyepiece. This give about 1.2 degreess field of view. I wasn't using the Siebert, I'm not sure why. Maybe I wanted to use an eyepice that I was quite familiar with? I dunno. Anyhow, did us the 22.5mm Siebert to pull in M43.
Then the fun start. I slew to the next object, check it off, repeat. If I knew I could grab an object with binoculars, I would. Why not, it was both fun and probably faster than slewing.
Look up an object, slew, check it off. I know, I know. MM purist will say it wasn't a real marathon. You know what? I don't care, I'll still buy you a beer some day. That's ok. I was enjoying myself for the most part.
Why "for the most part?" Well, this was too easy! MM is supposed to be a challenge and this wasn't a challenge at all. Slew, view, check off, repeat. It was like shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel!
I'm not going to recount all of the objects, but here are some of the ones I made notes on:
- M76 - hard!
- M48 - impressive. This was with the scope. I had had this as a binocular goal object this fall but I was foolishly feeling time pressure so I just slewed to it instead. I must revisit this one!
- M81 - Meridian flip.
I didn't note the time of the meridian flip but it seemed pretty early for me. I now need to use a hood for more of my objects. There were so many street lights I was getting reflections on my glasses!
- M82 - hard. This surprised me, but I guess it had to do with the conditions. Lots of light and I was essentially never dark adapted because of that. M82 should not be a hard object.
- M108 - hard. Needed the hood and averted vision. Since I was so far away from the alignment stars, I realigned on Mizar.
- M97 - easy with the hood
- M109 - hood and averted
- M40 - failed to split with the binoculars
Arghhhh, I was moving my chair and I kicked the tripod, moving it! Oh, Rags will be laughing now. But, I didn't panic, I just realign on one star and the gotos weren't all that bad.
- M63 - a fishing boat started up in the harbor, I'm now getting a very strong diesel smell. Normally, I'd hate that but it fits in with observing from a fishing village.
- M51 - Saw both parts. Feeling less time pressure now I gave this a good 10 minutes looking for more detail with the 22.5mm Siebert. No detail was visible.
M95. Ok, here it goes. The dim spirals. I didn't have anything centered in the eyepiece but I could see something nearby. But that's isn't enough to confirm it for me. My paper chart from TUMOL was useless since I wasn't star hopping. I went inside and fired up Stellarium, that was useless also. I download Carte des Ciel and that didn't help. I was in a bit of bind. You could say that Goto was letting me down. But, Goto is a just a tool like a Telrad or paper chart. I needed to use my tools better. I could see Leo in the sky with Saturn added. Realign! I replaced my alignment stars with Saturn and Denebola. Slew to M95. Dead center, as expected.
- M105 - 2 objects in the eyepiece. The McNish charts say I'll see two, but TUMOL shows 3, but one is dim. Eventually, with averted I saw the third so I confirmed M105.
The Virgo objects were an easy blur. Everyone was dead nuts centered in the eyepiece. I have no problems claiming a find for them. Did I star hop? Nope. Did I learn how dense Virgo/Leo were? Yup. Clearly this wolud be a fun area to explore from a dark site!
- M3 - Hey, it is back. Very nice.
- M83 - I hear church bells. 11pm? Very hard, tried averted and the hood. The tube is almost horizontal but with essentially only the hills and the dunes of Truro I have perfect horizon here. Sadly, I didn't nab it. In retropspect, I may have tried too early, it could have risen some more! Yup, that's it. I just simulated it in Stellarium, I had 2 more hours until it was high.
At this point I considered giving up. I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. But, I scanned ahead in the list M13 and M92 were coming up. So I kept on going.
- M12 in Ophicchius. It was below the horizon! So were all the Oph objects.
Time for bed.
Well, actually not. The seeing had been great so I put the 9mm in and did some Saturn viewing. Sadly, the 3rd floor deck just didn't work out for this. I was bummed. This was the best seeing I had ever seen for Saturn, oh well, it will still be there later.
I hibernated the scope and left it all outside.
Next morning, I woke it up. Took the Telrad off and put the solar filter on. 2 sunspots!
Totals:
Found with telescope: 55
Found with binoculars: 7
Found with naked eye: 1
Did not find: 3
Obstructed view: 4
Total found: 63
The missed objects were 83, 33 and 77. If I had waited about 10 minutes, 33 would have been an obstructed, not a missed. But there was no way to get it in the twilight.
I was done by quarter after 11.
I'm looking forward to the real one next week. It will be better with friends. Goto will give me the time to observe. Clearly, I was ahead of schedule most of the night. I didn't like the TUMOL printouts, the McNish printout is better for Goto, the descriptions are better.
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