At the July 30 Montebello gathering, I decided to bring only my Celestron Pro 10x50 binoculars to see how many little M-objects I could pull from the summer sky. My reasoning was twofold - when I left my San Lorenzo domicile, the skies looked atrociously foggy, and I hadn't the chance to read the fairly promising E-Mails about Montebello yet, so I didn't want to endure the potential disappointment of dragging out the 8"; also, I didn't want to be totally without gear in case it was great, so the binoculars were the obvious choice and, it turns out, a good one.

Mike Shade, my favorite "RWW" and all around impressive verbal jouster, kindly consented to allow me the use of his truck's hood as a table. Armed with S&T's Messier and Caldwell Cards, I went to work on the Sco, Oph & Sag Globulars as soon as darkness fell. Not having used the binoculars before for a general survey purpose, the ease with which these objects popped out astonished me. Even under the bright early evening skies M-4 was a cinch, and nearby M's 80, 19 and 62 fell in shortly thereafter. Globs M-9, 10 and 12 were easy, and even faint M-107 came in easily later (although I was stumped by M-14 a little to the east, I'll try again later for that). The big globular clusters, which I had looked at many times before in the dual glasses, began to show their might when compared to the smaller ones - M-3 was fine, and M's 5, 13, and 22 were brilliant beacons (I wouldn't believe it if someone told me, but swear I saw individual stars in M-5!). M-28, 54, 55 and 70 were also fairly easy, but M-69 eluded me as well. To round off the early evening globulars, M92 in Hercules, M56 in Lyra and M71 in Sagitta made a brief appearance.

More big bright easy M's - the Lagoon, Trifid, Swan and Eagle Nebulae glowed warmly and brilliantly. I had looked at these many times in binoculars, of course, but in the context of the impromptu general survey they seemed to take on higher statii, those of the standard-bearers of the glorious southern summer sky. In the quite-decent Montebello night, their resplendence made them seem even heroic, even noble.

The star clusters M-6 and M-7 started my open cluster search, and I then used the bright nebulae to easily star hop to M's 16, 18, 21, 23, and 25 (for some reason, M-24 didn't appear easily, enveloped as it was by the bright Milky Way). Zipping up to Cygnus yielded M29 and M39, as well as the faintest hint of the outline of the North American Nebula, NGC7000.

Some of the more southerly objects that began their evening's journey in the light dome of San Jose were missed - Globs M30, M72 and M75, and OC 73. A few others were missed as well, not for lack of trying but because of the general excitement generated by such things as Jupiter and the fine views through the array of larger instruments present. I did grab the Ring and the Dumbbell, and GCs M15 and M2 (another object in which the individual stars looked almost resolved), and galaxies M101 and M51, but then finally succumbed to just looking around and enjoying the views through various scopes. Mike kept up a lively and entertaining round of discussion with many folks about many sundry topics, including our friend Leonard Tramiel who brought along his binoculars for scanning, and the views of several objects through his 102mm refractor were alluring enough to make me drop my binoculars many times; a favorite find for him seemed to be planetary NGC 6309 in Oph, and we also found two globulars that provide a nice wide-field complement to M8. Darned if we could find the Blue Snowball Nebula, though, even looking right at it (it's this sort of thing that starts accusations of fraud flying, but fortunately Jupiter was attractive enough to relieve the stress of missed objects!).

Many thanks to Mike Shade for the views through his refractor (I am a confirmed Newtonian man, but dang if that refractor isn't a blast to play with!). Also to Mark Taylor for confirming some objects in his Meade LX-200 and especially for the nice views of Uranus and Neptune, the latter of which I had never seen directly before in 20 years of viewing (a real treat!). It was good to meet Matt Tarlach, giving first light to a nice 6" F9 homemade Dob he built for a friend (nice Jupiter views, Matt!). Combined with a good Mir pass, several good meteors including a decent early fireball, and some wonderful alien spacecraft continuously performing balletic moves near the southern horizon, it was a fine evening.