From: Dr Ajay Pradhan Subject: 25th March 2017 Messier Marathon RESULT Date: Tuesday, Marrch 28, 2017 Dear Hartmut and Christine, Subject: 25th March 2017 Messier Marathon RESULT We successfully tracked 79 Messier objects out of 110 in 1 single night of 25th March 2017, Saturday from Dhingchak Farms near Saralgaon, Kalyan, Mumbai, India. So glad to inform you, that we were a group of 17 friends led by - Dr. Ajay Pradhan and his "Cosmos Paradise," formerly "Wanderlust Adventures". The 31 Messier objects that we missed: - due to light pollution at horizon during dusk or dawn were: M2, M15, M30, M31, M32, M33, M52, M55, M72, M73, M74, M75, M76, M77, M103, M110. - due to lack of nearby stars to starhop were: M11, M26, M27, M64, M71. - due to faintness of the object itself or need for a bigger telescope were: M97, M108, M109. - due to lack of differentiation from M20: M8. - simply could not locate were: M78. The Telescope that was used: 6" Newtonian reflector (focal length = 1200 mm and F/ratio = f/7.8) on a Dobsonian mount & a 60 mm spotting scope with 20X eyepiece and 10x25 binoculars to assist. The observation started with a small orientation to newcomers in the evening immediately after sunset & concluded by a fabulous tally of 79 by around 6 am in the morning. We had a sequence of Messier objects that we followed and was downloaded from http://slas.us/docs/SLAS-MessierMarathon-Logs.pdf The tracking of these M-objects in the telescope was done by Dr Ajay Pradhan, Dr Milind Padhye, Dr Ashish Nanabhai & Dr Sagar Vedpathak. The sky mapping of these M-objects using mobile stargazing application 'Sky Map' was done by Dr Shreya Bala. The excellent logbook keeping of the observation was done by Astrophysicist Neal Thomas & Janhavi Nikharge. This was the first time, that we even wrote why we could not spot a particular M-object. Thanks to Neal and Janhavi. The Marathoners who completed it were: Dr Ajay Pradhan Dr Milind Padhye Dr Ashish Nanabhai Janhavi Nikharge Neal Thomas Dr Shreya Bala Dr Veena Madavi Jatin Shah Dr Prajakta Pachgade Dr Shrutika Timande Dr Amruta Khedekar Mayuresh Khedekar Dr Priyanka Katoria Dr Reena Faria Dr Sagar Vedpathak Dr Anjali Dr Shreya V Dr Akanksha With warm regards from Cosmos Paradise (cosmosparadise1 at gmail dot com): Dr. Ajay Pradhan (www.travelnew.tumblr.com ) & wishes for clear and dark skies at Dhingchak Farms.