The Hunt for "Fuzzies"

Jan Wisniewski, Kingston Centre

(also see my 2003 Messier Marathon Report)

I had to wait to year before being able to repeat Messier Marathon again (spring of 2001 was completely clouded over here in Eastern Ontario).

This year it did not look too promising either. Together with Doug Angle and Fred Barret, we were planing overnight observing. Our first choice was Saturday, March 16 (two days after New Moon). And while it was cloudy (or terribly windy or both) for almost a month, that Saturday morning turned out sunny and calm. The weather stayed perfect whole day and around sunset both me and Doug made it to Fred's place near Maberly, Ontario. Still, there was no sign of clouds or fog...

After a short deliberation we picked up observing spot on a hill above large beaver pond. Southern and Eastern horizons were perfectly low. There were trees (no leaves on them here in Ontario, yet) to the West. So early in the season, we thought they would no interfere with objects above Western horizon. Well, as you will see, it was not exactly so...

While it was slowly getting darker, we set up our scopes. Fred was using his 8 inch f10 SCT, Dough brought 4 inch f4 refractor and I lugged my trusty 6 inch f4 Dobby. It was getting chilly as well but it was still perfectly clear.

As Venus sunk below horizon, it was dark enough to located starfield of the first target - (in)famous M74. Young Moon (with beautiful Earthshine) guided me there but I was for a real surprize when I have reached hPiscis at 7:05 pm - comet Ikeya-Zhang was plainly visible in 8x50 binoculars next to that star! I kind of knew that visitor was hanging somewhere around Western horizon but never paid too much attention as it was cloudy all the time anyway... It looked like a good omen, for sure! 6 inch Dobsonian showed not only a head but a tail over 1° long. Once sky got a bit darker, that tail seemed to go almost all the way across 2° field of view.

Comet Ikeya-Zhang.

Mosaic of three Cookbook 245 / 8 inch f3.0 SCT images taken on March 27, 2002.

Eventually it got dark enough to try the hunt for M74 in Pisces. After a bit of confusion, I was able to find right area near hPiscis but it took me many minutes of staring (with averted vision) to detect its faint round glow in my telescope at 48x (at 24x the sky background was too bright) at 7:47 pm. A few minutes later, while still relatively high in the sky, it started to disappear behind above mentioned trees. With that accomplished, I was on to the good start of this Marathon.

The nigh proved to be clear until sunrise, when clouds finally rolled-in from the south. It was really damp and bitterly cold and we had to fight with iced crystals growing on optics and elsewhere (see "Lessons Learned" part at the bottom of this page).

After 9 pm. we got company... Wolves started to howl on the other side of a large beaver pond (at least we felt that way) but Molly (Fred's Collie) was not brave enough to pick it up (probably she agreed with our estimate of their location).

It was truly a memorable night of observing.

The table below lists detail of my observations followed by a short summary:

Summary of my March 16-17, 2002 Messier Marathon results:

Lessons learned

"Running" Messier Marathon with others allowed me to compare advantages and problems of using different scopes. Between Fred, Doug and myself we used:

March 16 seems to be a bit early to catch morning targets - M55, M72 and M73 escaped due to rapidly brightening sky. On the other hand there was plenty of room to spare with evening objects - even M74 was still high after dusk. March 25 may be the better date as morning objects should rise about 40 min. earlier while M74 and M77 should still be visible if Western horizon is low! I will wait for new Moon around that day in years to come (and pray for weather to cooperate ;-)

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© Jan Wisniewski