Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 20:16:15 EST
From: J.A. Bein
To: spider
Subject: Another Marathon report

Greetings,
Thank you for posting my previous reports.  I wonder how much this counts
towards my fifteen minutes of fame?
I gave it another try last night, and I may be game for one more effort
this year before I'm through.

March 22-23, 2001
38degrees 39.9' latitude, 79.5 longitude
Last night Craig Tupper and I were on a mission from God to score a perfect
110 Messier Marathon.  Last Saturday we were directed to a site in the George
Washington National Forest by a friendly park ranger.  The forest service
cleared this site at 3,370 ft for helicopter access when they were spraying
for Gypsy moths some years back.  It is a gently sloping hill about 4 miles
up a dirt road.  The weather forecast called for mostly clear to the east of
the site and for mostly cloudy to the West.  But as Craig said "Nothing
ventured, nothing gained." We encountered snow at 2,400 feet but a vehicle
preceded us so as long as we stayed in the tracks we were all right.  The
site had 8-10 inches of snow on the ground and the wind was a steady 20-30
mph with gusts of 50 to 60 mph.  Since we had over two hours before dark
there was no hurry to get set up.  We layered clothes and assembled our
scopes.  I used about an hour of my time to erect a snow block wall between
my scope and the howling wind out of the West.  Cumulus clouds were forming
over the ridge to our west and getting blown and dissipated as they passed
over to the East.  As M77 crept down to the horizon we were scanning the few
breaks that we could get, but to no avail.  The first three objects were lost
to the clouds.  As we waited for breaks in the West we picked up what we
could in Canis Major, Orion, Taurus, and Ursa Major.  We managed to bag M31,
32, 110 about five degrees above the horizon.  I didn't get the rest of the
Western objects in Cassiopeia and Perseus until 9:30.  The temperature had
dropped to 31 degrees by then and the wind had intensified. I made my way to
the galaxies in Virgo and Coma Berenices by 11:40.  It took both hands to
hold the scope at that altitude and the image was anything but steady.  In
order to view at that angle also required me to expose myself to the wind.  I
was just going to forego the ordeal when Craig wandered over having just
completed it down by the cars.  It was truly brutal, but I did it.  Since
there has been some discussion of how people do this I'll put in my 2 cents
worth.  I create a Megastar chart that shows the galaxies down to mag 11.
 
This shows me everything that I can pretty easily see from a dark site.  I
also mirror inverse it so that it matches my eyepiece view.  Then I draw a
little trail on it that gives me the route that I plan to take.  Once I find
my starting place I just follow the trail an eyepiece view at a time, Voila.  
Last night it didn't work like that.  I used M98 as a reference point and I
took many short trips, always returning to M98.  I acutely got everything in
about 20 minutes as I did not stop to record until I was done and I could let
go of the scope.  We took a break until 2:45 and then raced through the
morning objects.  Craig was just waiting for M30 as I finished up M72, 73, 2,
and 75 at 5:00.  As the sky began to lighten we detected a cloudy haze up to
about 15 degrees in the East.  M30 eluded us and we ended with 106/110 very
hard earned Messiers.

Yours,
Jonathan Bein