From: Harshad Abhyankar Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2005 22:50:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: Messier Marathon at SWAP, Pune, India Hello, Here is the report from our Messier Marathon-2005: ================================== SWAP members conducted the marathon from two locations: Buttewadi and Girawali, 50 km and 90 km north of Pune (India) respectively. Many of the participants were doing "en masse" deep sky hunting for the first time. The counts were: Abha Vaishampayan, Onkar Dixit & Kshitija Deshpande (44) Harshad Abhyankar (109) Hrishikesh Kulkarni & Rakesh Shroff (34) Jayant Damle (32) Nilesh Puntambekar & Amol Kankaria (70+) Tushar Purohit (40) It was my 3rd year of attempting the marathon. I missed only M30. I had it in the field alongwith 41 Cap, but the sky was a shade too bright already... 109 is my best so far, though I had to use averted vision for M110 and M74 (I used a 4.5" f9 Newtonian). I also spotted 40 other NGC objects. My target was a night's total of 150, missed that by 1 as well :-( Thanks & regards, - Harshad Abhyankar.