Paul Cézanne's Astronomy Observing Reports

I’ve been an astronomer for something like 3 years now. I honestly can’t remember when I started, except that it was a February. Soon after I started the talk on my club’s email list (yes, I joined a club immediatly, you should too, really, you should.) was of something called a Messier Marathon. Now I didn’t even know what a Messier was (is is one of 110 fairly bright and interesting objects in the sky, discovered by the astronomer Charles Messier in the late 1700’s when he was looking for comets. It was essentially a list of places not to look at, so it is quite ironic today that it is the list of things that we look at first!

A Messier Marathon is when you try to get all the Messier objects in one night! Some clubs have rules about what equipment you are allowed to use, I don’t cotton to that. Use whatever you want to, computer controlled Goto scopes are fine in my book.

My current club doesn’t put one on (memo to myself, try and get one started next year) so I made the almost 5 hour drive north to my old club to both look at the sky, but more importantly, meet up with all my old friends.

In the photo you can see some telescope and binoculars as well as some big telescopes and huge telescopes

What you don’t see is my setup. I decided to go simple this year. I normally use a computer controlled scope and for last years marathon I brought out my 1962 Edmund Scientific 6″ reflector. This year I was going to do it all with my Canon 15×50 Image Stabilized binoculars. Why not? Messier used a small scope. My binoculars are smaller but surely made of better glass plus the advantages of using both eyes is well known. Now he hard darker skies for sure, so I figured it was a fair game. This isn’t as crazy as it sounds, I have currently seen 87 of the 110 objects so I know I can get the bulk of them.

I was using the Sky and Telescope Pocket Atlas, which is a wonderful field atlas a well as Duchek’s Telrad Finder Charts, a nicely laminated volume which is also just great for use in the field. But when looking for dim Messier objects, I find that both of them are lacking sometimes. You see, when using a telescope you can use this charts to “hop” from one object to another. With binoculars, sometimes the destination is dim and even just stellar at times. And when you are looking at a field of identical dim objects you need to be certain that you have the right one. So I had my Palm PDA loaded up with Astromist, a truely wonderful planetarium program. You should go buy it, right now. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. With Astromist I can load charts that go down to mag 11, more than I’ll need for sure, but I’ll be able to distinguish which dim dot is my galaxy and which one isn’t! Binoculars are easy for some objects but harder for others. The dim objects just aren’t harder to see, the are harder to identify also.

I used Larry McNish’s Messier Planner to generate my list. I was, of course, using the Ed Ting sequence, he is a member of our club and was at the marathon, using anything else would be just plain wrong!

So of course the forecast was for crappy skies but it looked like we’d get a couple of hours of observing in so at 1pm I got into Jezebel the volvo and started driving south. Yeah, from Cape Cod I have to drive south to go north! Come to think of it, I had to drive east to go west also!

I get there, get setup and great all my old friends. Even if it clouded up I was glad I came.

At sunset there is a frenzy of activity to try and grab all the objects that are setting. I knew I wasn’t even going to try for M77 and M74. I had tried for them a few weeks earlier under perfect conditions and failed to get them. And the haze was thick, these were not even close to perfect conditions!

Here’s the list of objects I got in the order I got them. This is different from the Ting sequence only because of the clouds!

• M41 – Grabbed it early just to see if we could see anything in the haze, hard grab but the sky was still pretty blue
• M36, M37, M38 – Harder than I thought, I was all turned around in my head. I usually observe these at the start of the season, they were all upside down now!
• M42, M43 – M43 was tough but I did see bit of glow around the star above M42. In retrospect, I wonder if that was just haze!
• M52
• M103 – probably would have missed it if I hadn’t already spent a lot of time this summer in Cassiopeia with binoculars looking at M103 and all the nearby NGCs
• M31 – Hard! The western clouds hard cleared enough but this was a tough grab. M32 and M110 were impossible for me.
• M45 – naked eye of course, but then I put the Canons on them, nasty tonight
• M34
• M47, M46 – I just love looking at this pair in the binoculars. Such a contrast!
• M51 – way out of sequence but I was with a friend now futzing with his new scope and he was busy adjusting something so I grabbed it since I was just standing around
• M78
• M35 – Usually I grab this with 36,37 and 38 but since I was upside down I missed it then
• M1 – I was quite surprised I got this under the conditions
• M93
• M50 – had to work the charts for this one, the area is rich in things.
• M44 – The Beehive, got it both naked eye and with the binoculars
• M48 – hard work with the charts again
• M67 – a brand new one for me, sweet!

During this section I also tried for M79. I tried a lot but just couldn’t do it. In sequence that was right after M34.

It was now around 10pm and the haze came in strong so we all went inside to eat and talk. Lots of good food tonight!

By 11:30, only a guess, it had cleared again so we went outside to try for more. We were into Leo now.

• M65, M66 – I went off sequence to get the easier ones first. These were hard, uh oh…
• M95, M96 – I must have spent about half an hour on these two. The haze was deep and these were challenging. I was right on the right spot, my charts confirmed that (Pocket Atlas) but nothing was there. Eventually, with averted vision they came out. Notice that I did not get M105, that wasn’t for lack of trying!

Now the binocs had dewed up. This happens to me on the eyepiece end, not the objective. Presumably moisture from your eye gets on the glass. I put them with some reusable hand warmers in a toolchest to warm up some and pulled out the backup Canon 10×30IS binoculars. I tried for M81 and M82 but they dewed up in about 2 minutes. I took a break brought out the 15×50s again

• M81, 82 – much harder than I’m used to

And that was it! Virgo disappeared along with all its galaxies. Vega was still visible so I tried for M57 but failed. Too much haze.

We hung out a but more then packed it in around 2AM.

Total count, 28. Not too bad for the conditions. See you all in October!