I have been trying to avoid doing Messier observations with my Orion 10x50 Ultraview binocular from my home in Palo Alto, California. It's not that I can't see things -- most Messier objects have enough surface brightness to be detectable against the sky of suburbia -- rather, one can see much more from darker places, and so small an instrument has little capability to waste. I will have more enjoyable views if I observe from good sites.

But the other night I was up fairly late, and some of the constellations that are prominent in the evening sky of winter were beginning to be visible, and I couldn't resist pulling out the 10x50. First I found M34 -- not really a winter object, but one I never seem to look at very much because I can never remember quite where it is. I know now -- roughly half way between gamma Andromeda and Algol. The 10x50 resolved this rather prominent galactic cluster nicely. M34 would be more popular if there weren't such nearby wonders as the Pleiades and the Andromeda galaxies to distract the casual viewer.

I spent a while looking for M1. The Crab Nebula is one of the difficult Messier objects for small aperture, though not the toughest, so I pulled out an atlas to make sure I was looking in the right spot. No luck -- there was some fuzz near the charted position, but not at it. No matter, I thought, I will try again from darker sky.

Then I noticed one corner of Gemini peeping above the tree line, and went hunting M35. It, too was large and easy. I will check in more favorable conditions to see if I can see the small, non-Messier open cluster which borders it; I suspect it will be visible.

I went inside and pulled out an atlas with a fainter limiting magnitude than my old, 1960s-vintage Norton's Star Atlas, to double-check the position of M1 for future reference, and what do you know? The Crab is misplotted by a small fraction of a degree in my Norton's. I was too lazy to go back out and see if the fuzz I had been seeing was in fact M1, but on the next night I did check, and sure enough, it was. It took averted vision to hold it, but I was able to see M1 in a 50 mm binocular from suburbia. Not bad.