Messier Marathon Object Ordering (?)

After 5 years in the hobby messing around with scads of different equipment and developing observing/imaging skill, it's my intention to finally attempt an all nighter M-athon.

I will be using my recently acquired 6" F5 Newt on altazimuth tripod mount, a Telrad, a 24mm Panoptic (2 degree; 31x; 4.8mm exit pupil ), a 9mm Nagler T6 (1 degree; 83x; 1.8mm exit pupil), and I'll have along a 13mm Nagler T6 w/UHC filter just in case (1.4 degrees; 57x; 2.6mm exit pupil).

NELM at Zenith for the site is roughly 5.2.

I've printed out all the Messier objects in Telrad charts and I've fooled around with SkyTools to look at a few different ways to approach the list, including ordering by the last time the object will be visible for the night/morning, and by the optimal time to view. I'm not really sure what's the best approach. It appears to me by either ordering that a huge chunk of the list (maybe a third) is mid evening ~7:30-8:30PM, and another huge chunk (another third) is in the morning ~4:00-5:00AM, with the remaing third of the list being spattered across the remainging hours (obviously this is the most difficult part of the list time-wise).

I'd like to know how best to order the objects, so that I can get them all in one night (or possibly the morning one day, and the following night. Assume a perfect horizon.

As a fallback plan (and a trial run ahead of time), I will likely split the list into two. One list from 7PM to 2AM, the other list from 3AM to 5AM. That way if the official night is clouded out, I've at least got a plan to get this done without killing myself on a weeknight.

Thanks!!
-Stephen



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