Messier marathon
A Messier marathon is a competition in which the participants have to use a telescope to find all 110 astronomical objects in the Messier catalog - mainly galaxies , star clusters and nebulae - during a single night . A Messier marathon can only be carried out in spring (around the end of March, beginning of April) due to the different seasonal visibility of the objects.
In the classic form of competition, only a manually controlled telescope may be used for this, i. H. without the computer-controlled GoTo mountings that are common today . In a weaker variant, the winner is named who discovers as many of the listed objects as possible within a given period of time (around 2 hours).
literature
- Don Machholz : Messier Marathon Observer's Guide. Handbook and Atlas. A complete guide to running your own Messier Marathon . MakeWood Products, Colfax CA 1994, ISBN 0-9646487-1-7 .
- Harvard Pennington: The Year-Round Messier Marathon Field Guide . Willmann-Bell, Richmond VA 1997, ISBN 0-943396-54-9 .