On Mar 17, 2007, at 10:22 PM, Paul Rodman wrote: > From: Tim Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> March Madness, eh?? The March madness around here is that it's >> 100F (38C) in Phoenix today - we got a lousy 2 weeks of Winter and >> now my >> new car's AC decides to misbehave. >> >> We prepped all of our cold viewing outfits and sleeping bags for >> tomorrow night's Messier Marathon in the desert south of Phoenix. >> It usually pops down into the 40's this time of year for the >> viewing party, but not THIS year!. Looks like picnic umbrellas, >> larger coolers, and LOTS of H2O are more the need. >> >> Ah well, 109 of 110 objects visible this year (M30 is keeping its >> head below the horizon this year). Last year I hit 105, I'll be >> shooting for at least that many again star hopping with a manual >> 6" f6 Dob, 15x80 Binoculars, and a Celestron 9 1/4 with GPS and >> GOTO to verify my manual findings. >> >> Any other astro-heads going out for viewing this year? > > Not in Seattle, that's for sure...
We actually had three attendees that flew down from Oregon and Washigton. The two farthest were from India and Mexico City. > I assume you did your marathon planning with AstroPlanner (made > with REALbasic) :^) Nope - just a copy of the TUMOL from David Greene, Sorry. Since there's so much dust at our viewing site, we try to keep things as manual as possible (paper, pencil, red-lensed Mag lite). For those who know, we got 108 of 110 objects with our SCT 9-1/4" Celestron w/GPS and Goto. M30 did't rise until after morning twilight and all we could see was 41 Capricornus (the guide star). As for M74, two people with 24" and 26" Obsessions got it early, but smaller apertures just couldn't resolve it through the evening twilight. I then got 56 objects with the 15x70 Binoculars and 91 objects with the 6" f6 Dob. The importance about these last two numbers is that they were achieved totally manually using the Pocket Sky Atlas, a Planisphere, a Daisy BB gun red dot finder (on the Binos) and my Telrad on the 6". Quite a bit more challenging than simply telling the scope to goto M57. Tim _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
