I had my Intes six-inch f/10 Maksutov at Fremont Peak State Park, near San Juan Bautista, California, on the night of July 19-20, 1996. With moonset at an early 10:30 PM, I would have expected more people to show up, but there were only about five telescopes there.

I continue to be very impressed with the versatility of the Intes. Setup and alignment are quick (which has more to do with the Super Polaris mounting than with the Intes OTA). The whole thing fits into my Geo Metro and leaves room for a passenger. The well-illuminated and well-corrected two-inch field makes possible the use of wide-angle long focal-length two-inch-barrel eyepieces for very satisfactory low-magnification views, whereas f/10 allows considerably more magnification with no difficulty.

The low-power eyepieces that I have been using are an old standby, -- a University Optics 32 mm Erfle, and a new 40 mm Koenig type II, a military surplus unit (Vietnam War -- I didn't think to ask which side) that I bought off AstroMart a few weeks ago. They give 47 and 38 diameters, respectively. I also have a 55 mm Plossl -- University's again -- but have not thought to try it on the Intes yet. These units are all in two-inch barrels. Mostly I use the 32 mm; the 40 mm is so heavy that it is fussy to adjust the focuser clutch to hold it without slipping.

Anyhow, at 47x, 38x and 150x (10 mm Vixen Lanthanum), comet Hale-Bopp showed central concentration even greater than last week; the nucleus was almost stellar in appearance. The coma was strongly asymmetric. I wouldn't yet call what I saw a tail, though that may be more a judgement call on the use of the word than anything else. I did not think to try looking for the comet naked-eye again.

At 47x, I could trace out M31 to more than four degrees long, and see clearly one dark lane on one side of the nucleus, bounded on both sides by the glow of the galaxy itself. At the same magnification, I could see color in the Trifid Nebula and a great deal of dark detail in the Lagoon Nebula.

I chased after a batch of double stars, using mostly the 10 mm Lanthanum for 150x, but switching occasionally to a 4 mm Meade Research-Grade Orthoscopic for 375x, for toughies. Two were worthy of note.

Sky Catalog 2000.0 (volume 2) gives a separation of 0.6 arc second for Struve 2215 (ADS 10795), with magnitudes of 5.8 and 7.8. The most recent measurement of two was in 1959, the star seemed to have closed by a few tenths of an arc second in the preceding century. I found it elongated and perhaps constricted at 375x -- the elongation was not symmetric, the end where the fainter star was appeared pointy. This is extremely good performance, for Dawes's limit for a six inch is about 0.76 arc seconds.

Furthermore, the same source gives a separation of 0.7 arc seconds, which does not appear to be changing, for Otto Struve 338 (ADS 10850), whose magnitudes are 6.8 and 7.1, and I got a clean split on that one, also at 375x. That is also quite impressive performance.