Messier Marathon - Everything Science

Last night I participated in what is now my second Messier marathon. Boy, it is a fun thing to do. I eneded up fourth overall, which is pretty good. We were not able to see all of the objects though, because of clouds again. It was clouded until 9 PM (we missed 9 or 10 objects because of this) at which point it cleared up completely, and I mean completely, it became a wonderfull night, and then clouded again at about 2 AM.
At this point the event was stopped and since five hours (the minimum) had passed the marathon was considered valid. Ironically just after counting and giving away the prizes we noticed the sky had cleared again, but alas, too late.

The winner, who had just completed the Virgo cluster and was struggling with Coma Berenices had 47 objects. I was just beggining at that time with Virgo and had 32 objects.

In a way I was thankfull for the interruption because by this time my back was killing me, but I'm sure I would have caught up with the guy had I had a liitle more time. I had three things going against me, at first I had a very hard time (more than half an hour) just trying to align the telrad, telescope and finder. I guess the pressure got to me, I just could not bring all three things to bear at the same star!. I finally managed that and by that time I was behind. Then my location was somewhat secluded, I had to wait long times to got fetch judges while they were signing objects for everyone else who were gathered more closely. So that did not help the rythm. Then I could not resist to watch the Jupiter double transit and spent too long at it (it is in fact what I was doing when we stopped, instead of going on to the Virgo cluster). It was just a fantastic three dimensional effect. As hypnotic as Saturn I would say, Jupiter can be inmensely fun at times like this.

But I'm not complaining, I had a wonderful time and saw many wonderfull things.

I saw M101 for the first time! after such a long quest it was quite anti climatic. It's almost invisivle and it did not sport any of the wonderful structure seen in photos. I also saw many other things for the first time. I liked the planetary nebula in M46 (I had seen the cluster plenty of times even on binoculars but not the nebula), on the other hand, the owl nebula was also anticlimatic.

It was nice to say hello to Omaga Centauri, which I had not had the pleasure of seeing through this scope, What an incredible sight! and also had a look at Centaurus A, whoose looks remainded me of Pacman. So you see, there were these other things also that I had too look at which distracted me from the main task. It's just that good night like this come so few and far appart, that the competition itself was not that important.

There is a little mystery about my search for M109 that might interest some of you to decipher. I was using the newer version of Don Machholz's Messier Marathon Handbook and Atlas (excellent maps for this task) and apparently misjudged the scale on the M109 map. I must have gone past it and found something else instead. It is another spiral between two stars but some of the stars that should be present, according to the photos the judges were using to compare, were missing. We all spent quite a long time trying to figure if what I had was indeed M109 or something else. Then I saw that I was actually looking at two galaxies, very close in the field of view. the Judges concurred. So it could not be M109. What was it? The search begun right then and there using palm based planetarium software.
The star configuration around the object is very simmilar to that around M109. The three little stars below the galaxy seen in photos were missing though.
There are quite a few candidates. I suspect the pair NGC 4102 (mag 12) and NGC 4068 (mag 13). The problem with that is that they seemed a lot more close together in the eyepiece. So the other candidate pair seems to be NGC 4088 (mag 11) and NGC 4085 (mag 12.7). The problem with these is that it was simply not the area of the sky we were looking in, unless I had confused Phad with chi UM, which is very unlikely since I'm sure that Phad was shinier than the delta UMA which is to its north and west. Chi would have Phad in that position, which is shinier than itself so they are hard to confuse. It remains a possibility I guess, if I also confused north with south or east with west.

In any case, I dont think I did find M109 at all. The judge insisted remembering M109 being more to the south (up) from phad than to its east (as I was looking). I found a galaxy there and he called it M109, but I'm pretty sure it was NGC 3953(mag 10.6) instead. It did not match the photo either in my opinion. I did not feel bad since I had found three galaxies for one. The thing is that area of the sky is full of galaxies. Did I see an uncharted one? Did I see a comet?
And just imagine the confusion had I gotten to the Coma Virgo Area!

PS. I forgot to mention M104 (I skipped a few objects to get to this one, the Sombrero galaxy, because I was just to curious to see it). It was wonderfull. I took a moment to magnify it to high power and it took it well. It looked a bit different from photos too. Not as round, more like a long thin whisp with an offset nucleus. Very interesting neverthelss.

PSS. I have mixed feelings about the fact that there was no dew problem. The guys who beat me were all using SCT's and dew would have slowed them down considerably if not knocked them out. I would have been able to continue. On the other had it was just so much more comfortable for everyone not having dew.