Viewing Notes
March 24, 2001
(south of) Arizona City, AZ
N 32° 27' 42"
W 111° 43' 52"
Obsession 20" f/5 reflector

Well, I've done it. I have accomplished what is probably the ultimate astrogeek feat ever entertained - completing a Messier Marathon in just one evening. The goal is to view 110 objects (109 Messier objects plus one substitute for M102 - (NGC 5866 for this evening)) in one outing, preferably with a bunch of similarly warped individuals. Viewing all Messier Objects in a single evening can be done only during the time of the year when the Sun is in Pisces, an area fairly devoid of Messier's observations. This currently happens around the end of March.

The Saguaro Astronomy Club (SAC) has been sponsoring the All Arizona Messier Marathon for the past 9 years or so. The Arizona City site is about 40 miles (as the crow flies) NW of Tucson but takes about 2 hours to get there by automobile (because there's really only one road to this area and you have to drive 50 miles northeast of Tucson to hook up to it - and then drive 30 miles southeast to get to the site). This site is relatively dark - except for the glow from the cities of Casa Grande (north) and Marana (southeast). Living up to its reputation, this area was dusty as hell.

The day didn't start off all that great as we had high, thin clouds roll in. I considered not going but figured that I had at least as good of a chance at viewing more objects because of the 20" aperture (clouds be damned!). Thankfully, the cloud front moved through and the skies were starting to clear in the West during sunset. The skies were very clear for the rest of the evening. The temperature was great - much warmer than last week (mainly due to being 3500 feet lower in elevation) and I really didn't need to put on a heavy jacket until midnight or so. However, I was back down to just a hooded sweatshirt at 4 am after more objects came into view (more trips back and forth to the telescope).

M74 and M76 were the first objects to view, with M74 being logged at 7:50 p.m. M74 never was more than a fuzzy star-like object, but M76 was more galaxy like (viewed about 15 minutes after M74). I was clicking off objects pretty quickly and soon caught up to a guy who was using DSCs. All I was using was a Telrad and finder charts. Unfortunately, I left my binoculars at home so some of the locating was pretty difficult.

By 5 a.m. or so I had logged 109 objects and only M30 remained. The pressure was really on because dawn was starting to overtake the eastern horizon. I finally located M30 at 5:38 a.m. A testament to how geeked-out I am, I let out a yelp as I realized that I had just completed my first Messier Marathon.