There are two types of skills being discussed here. 1. Observing skill. Once you are on an object, how well do you notice the features available. GOTO scopes aid this endeavor. GOTOs enhance this skill. 2. Knowledge of the sky and finding objects. GOTO scopes atrophy this skill. Before the GOTO, I believe people had fun finding all of the MM objects and getting a quick look because that is all you could afford if you wanted to hit them all. The hardest skill, IMHO, is to find the twilight objects. After the GOTO, you could hit them all and take a relatively long time to look at each object. It is nice to see all of them in one night to refresh your memory of these objects. This type of marathon can be equally enjoyable but for an entirely different reason. There is nothing hard about this other than staying up all night, remembering to wake up from naps, but keeping your focus to make detailed observations would be hard.=20 Since AJ volunteers to handle awards, it is ridiculous to expect AJ to split hairs and segregate awards. Having said that, a better metric for the GOTO people would be total minutes spent observing the full 110 objects - not practical, but more in the spirit of what the goto people are doing. Or how many sketches they made could be another metric. This just goes to show that Friday afternoons are best suited for these types of discussions. Tom -- See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please send personal replies to the author, not the list.