Date: Mon Mar 23, 2015, 05:03
From: Dr Ajay Pradhan
Subject: 21st March Messier Marathon 2015 RESULT

We successfully tracked 81 Messier objects out of 110 in 1 single night of 
21st March 2015, Saturday from Dhingchak Farms near Saralgaon, Kalyan, 
Mumbai, India.
 
So glad to inform you, that we were a group of 38 friends led by - 
Dr. Ajay Pradhan, Pooja Tolia, Prabhu Velar & Rhushikesh Deshpande.
 
The sky conditions were poor, not because of light pollution, but because of 
clouds, which gave us company right from sunset to sunrise. There was a haze 
especially in the evening hours till late night, giving brownish hue to the 
skies. However we were lucky enough to get some patches in the sky which were 
clear & we used that to achieve a score of 81 Messier objects.
 
The 29 Messier objects that we missed were - M2, M15, M16, M30, M31, M32, 
M52, M54, M55, M58, M70, M72, M73, M75, M77, M81, M82, M83, M88, M89, M90, 
M91, M95, M99, M100, M101, M102, M103 & M110. 
 
The 4 Telescopes that were used: 8" EQ 5-F/4.9, 6" Newtonian reflector on a 
Dobsonian mount, 10" reflector on Alt-Azimuth stand & 90 mm refractor. 
 
The observation started with a small orientation to newcomers in the evening 
of 21st March & concluded by a fabulous tally of 81 by 6 am in the morning 
of 22nd March.
 
We had a sequence of Messier objects that we followed, but sometimes had to 
check the skies wherever there was a cloud-free patch!

The tracking of these M-objects was done by Pooja Tolia & Rhushikesh 
Deshpande. They always stayed ahead and kept the next object ready to be 
viewed by all in the telescope.
 
The excellent logbook keeping of the observation was done by Dr. Priya Nisar, 
Bhairavi Apte & Pooja Tolia.
 
The observers were:
 
Dr. Ajay Pradhan
Pooja Tolia
Prabhu Velar
Rhushikesh Deshpande
Dr. Ashish Nanabhai
Dr. Rajesh Dhole & his 6 friends.
Dr. Deepa Khandare
Dr. Priya Malde & her 2 kids - Aarav Malde & Ashay Malde
Advocate Vivek Surve
Raveendran
Jayakrishnan Natarajan
Jithin Raj
Dr. Anirudh Purswani
Mitalee Prabhu
Nishchal Minda
Krishna Chatpar
Melroy D'Mello
Mansi Aggarwal
Henna Khan
Anam Khan
Bhairavi Apte
Kalyani Bhopi
Rupali Tandel
Deepa Maurya
Dr. Aditi Sabnis
Anushree Sabnis
Aditya Gupte
Vaidehi Gupte
Muthukumaran
Vallinayagam
Ankur Parekh
Arpit Gada
Mittal Gada

If anybody is left out, it is unintentional.

With warm regards from Team Cosmos Paradise (cosmosparadise at yahoo.com):

Dr. Ajay Pradhan (www.travelnew.tumblr.com)
Pooja Tolia (poojatolia.wordpress.com)
Prabhu Velar (twoprabhu at gmail.com)
Rhushikesh Deshpande (deshpande.omkar07 at gmail.com)

& wishes for clear and dark skies at Dhingchak Farms
(http://www.millenniumspaces.com/)