As the Moon passed full, I resumed my Herschel-400 survey with Refractor Red, my dayglow-hued Vixen 55 mm fluorite refractor. I promised not to bore you all with long lists of catalog numbers, but I thought to mention that I am more than half done -- I have observed all the Herschel-400 objects from 10:00 through 18:59 hours of right ascension, and a few more besides, for a running total of 222. I have been able to see all of them with a 12 mm Brandon eyepiece, which provides a magnification of 37x. Many of the objects have been observed from my yard in Palo Alto, California -- using an exit pupil of only 1.5 mm spreads out the sky glow above suburbia a great deal. Yet I am sure that there are a few objects that I could not have found without darker sky.

Only a bit more than a third the sky includes over half the objects, because that area enfolds not only the heart of the Virgo galaxy cloud, but also the Scorpio and Sagittarius Milky Way. The character of the objects changed as I observed ever farther eastward, from ubiquitous galaxies to such objects in our own galaxy as open clusters, globular clusters, and planetary nebulae. Most of the open clusters that I have so far looked at have been at least partly resolved, which is to say they showed at least some individual stars, on a background that often looked a bit granular from unresolved stars. Most globulars show no trace of resolution at 37x, or for that matter, at any higher magnification with this instrument. All of the planetaries that I have so far looked at but one, have been obviously non-stellar at 37x. The exception was NGC 6543, but the next eyepiece I happened to grab was a 5 mm Celestron Orthoscopic, and at 88x, the object clearly showed its non-stellar nature.

I have looked at a few other noteworthy objects in passing. I was particularly pleased to be able to detect Barnard's Galaxy, NGC 6822, with 37x in the little refractor. That's not very much light, and rather more magnification than would likely be optimum for such a low surface brightness. But there it was. I also got a separation of Antares, at 176x (5 mm Orthoscopic plus 2x Celestron Ultima Barlow), that was moderately convincing but not completely so: The seeing generally kept the diffraction rings in motion, and though there did appear to be a condensation in the first one at the right position angle and of the right color (green, by contrast), I would have liked steadier conditions to make sure. By coincidence, another observer had a different 55 mm Vixen fluorite out on the night I looked at Antares, so we tried it, too, using a late-model Zeiss 4 mm Orthoscopic and a 2x Barlow. The views through the two instruments seemed similar to me, and I think my friend also suspected the companion. His telescope was doing very well, for one that is not painted red.

Refractor Red continues to be enormously fun to observe with, and also thoroughly to debunk the myth that deep-sky observation requires enormous aperture.