The new Moon will allow carrying out a competition conventionally called "Shingletown Messier Marathon". In view of the astronomical twilight beginning at the observation spot: the Marathon starts 06/17/2004 10:40 p.m., ends 06/18/2004 04:00 a.m. As many as 94 of 109 Messier objects will be accessible for observations. On average only 3,5 minutes could be spent on finding each object. The task is very complicated but feasible. A list of the objects in a sequence most handy for observations could be compiled on one's own based on the available visibility tables.

These are the two rules for conducting Messier Marathon to be remembered: the first - one cannot use automatic pointing, the second - the number of the objects found over a night is checked by nobody. The Marathon motto is quite Olympic one: to participate is more important than winning!