Date: Sun, Apr 15, 2007 at 8:08 PM From: Jane Houston Jones Subject: Messier Marathon 2007 Results Jane Houston Jones and Morris Jones March 17, 2007 Observing from Red Cloud Road off the I-10 freeway, California. Llatitude 33N Longitude 115W Mojo and I headed out to our favorite dark sky site for the 2007 Messier Marathon March 17, 2007. We mostly use the Don Machholz observing sequence. Don introduced us to this location a few years ago, and so we always honor him by conducting our annual marathon from this location. We both observed 109 objects, and we both missed M-30 at dawn. To me, M-4 and M-24 were especially magnificent this year. My favorite observation, not to be found on the Messier list was a sidewinder (or horned rattlesnake) which was curled up next to my brother's car. Other less venomous bonus objects: 8:07 p.m. Canopus, 8:14 p.m. Zodiacal Light, and several galaxy groups from the Astronomical League's "Observe Galaxy Groups and Clusters" project during the course of the night. I recorded observations of several groups on the project near Messiers 100, 106, 61, 49, 86, 87, 60. Omega Centauri when it transited. Mojo's favorites were M46, the open cluster with the planetary in the middle,M35, the foreground open cluster with distant NGC 2158, M105, as a galaxy trio, and the silliest messiers, M40 and M73 always make for a chuckle. A few pictures from this year's marathon are here: http://photo.whiteoaks.com/2007-03-17-messier/ The seeing, meaning atmospheric scintillation, wasn't especially good. But the transparency was spectacular. I think we had the benefit of a fog and haze layer over the L.A. basin. We both used "big dobs," Mojo's a 14.5" f/4.8, Jane's a 17.5" f/4.5. We use 80mm finders with erecting prism diagonals. Our dobs were built by Litebox Telescopes . Mojo's mirror from Nova Optical, mine, a recovered old Coulter dob mirror. -- Jane Houston Jones Monrovia, CA 34.2048N 118.1732W, 637.0 feet http://www.whiteoaks.com Old Town Astronomers: http://www.otastro.org