From: Tom Hoffelder Subject: Messier Marathon 2005 Dick Parker and I did a marathon again this year, at Arunah Hill in Massachusetts. http://www.arunah.org/ Horizons there are not the best (as you may see in the attached photos) and it was on April 9/10, but we did each find 103 objects. Both of us used the right angle sweep of course. We missed M74, 77, 79, 33, 32, 110 and 30. The first four were below the horizon or behind trees in the evening. The M31 group was behind trees in the morning from where our scopes were set up, but we were able to walk down the hill a bit and see M31 in binocs. M30, even at this late date, was not up high enough to be seen before the sky became too bright, because of the latitude (42.5 N). I used my C14 and Dick had his brand new 6" f/15 refractor which he made (including grinding and polishing the doublet lens). This scope was quite an attention getter, so he had lots of interruptions, but still managed to find all the objects available to us, without any type of setting circles or go to. It was a very unusual night for New England: no wind, no dew, no clouds for the entire time. There was still some snow on the ground in the shade of the trees, so it was a little on the cool side, but not too bad.