Date: Wed, Mar 28, 2012 From: Lorenzo Comolli Subject: Photographic Messier marathon Dear Hartmut, I'm happy to report you that I've undertaken a photographic Messier marathon on the last weekend (night of 24-25 March 2012). I observed from about 45° North (44°40'N, 9°12'E, Capanne di Cosola, Italy, 1500 m height). Dark sky (max SQM 21.55) but quite hazy and with some clouds, no stars on the horizon due to very high humidity and extinction. This is the first trial for me, and the only information was your list printed the day before. I've ended with 105 objects. All images taken with a TEC 140 apo refractor and Canon 5D DSLR (first time for a DSLR?), on a goto mount Gemini G41, connected and commanded from my netbook pc. All (all!) images were autoguided with a 80/400 refractor and lodestar ccd, without moving the telescope or ccd in the field. All exposures were 60 or 120 s, with the exception of a few objects where 2-3 shots were composed, or other two fields where longer exposures where gathered (while I had a pause, for visual observations obviously): M95-96-105, 60 min exp, and M83, 90 min exp. At the end of the night I needed to move the entire setup (60 kg!) toward a location with a better horizon, about 50 meters away (thanks friends for help). I eventually fell in the dark, and I still have to recover. The not observed objects are all in the morning: M54-69-70, behind some trees at 8° altitude, M55 behind trees and clouds at 4° altitude, and M30 below horizon. You can find a more detailed report and all the recorded images here: http://www.astrosurf.com/comolli/d112.htm Thank you for your historic archive of all observations! Please let me know if I can contribute with more details. Best Regards, Lorenzo Comolli Italy