I took Harvey, my big white Celestron 14, to Fremont Peak State (California) Park on Friday evening, September 18, and again on Saturday. It was clear both evenings, and on the second, fog below increased sky darkness, and seeing was pretty good. There were few other telescopes Friday, but things were crowded the next night: I had a lovely opportunity to run over an 8.5-inch Ceravalo Mak-Newt, while jockying my Geo Metro into the last parking space, but I missed.

I continued my two main observing programs -- chasing down faint planetaries from Jay McNeil's list, and observing groups of NGC galaxies. It takes careful star-hopping and lots of staring through a 252x eyepiece (Meade 15.5 mm Research-Grade Erfle), perhaps also "blinking" with a narrow-band filter, to find the planetaries, so I only logged about 25 new ones. And they aren't much to look at -- only rarely do I record detail other than whether the object appeared stellar or diffuse, and -- if diffuse -- whether I saw a central star or not.

The galaxy groups are a different story. These are physical groups of galaxies, with many members large enough to have an NGC or IC number. _Uranometria_2000.0_ and _Millennium_Star_Atlas_ have decent coverage of galaxies, so I find targets by paging through the charts and looking for clusters of little ovals. (A wag has called these "god droppings".) One such region lies a few degrees south of beta Andromeda. From (epoch 2000) right ascension 1:04 through 1:28, between 32 and 35 north declination, _Millennium_ plots more than 40 galaxies, including two separate one-square-degree areas with more than a dozen each.

I cruised through this region at 98x, using a Vernonscope 40 mm Erfle with a field of view of about 40 arc minutes. The C-14 is just loafing at this magnification -- more would darken the sky background and make the central portions of the galaxies stand out -- but even so, these targets were easy to see. There is a smaller but more concentrated clump of galaxies at about 0:18 +30.0 (epoch 2000): Here six NGC galaxies are grouped in a field about five arc minutes wide. Such groups are plentiful: Do look for them in the atlas of your choice.

I chased down a few special faint fuzzies, as well. The dwarf galaxy Andromeda II lay near the first galaxy group mentioned above. I had seen it before, but took a moment to look at it in the C-14. I also found the Pegasus Dwarf, UGC 12613, at about 23:28.5 +14.7 (epoch 2000). It has rather low surface brightness: I could not see a trace of it at 252x, but at 98x, it was easier than Andromeda II.

The toughest deep-sky object of the weekend was Burbidge's Chain, a linear group of five distant galaxies located at 0:47.5 -20.5 (epoch 2000), about a quarter of a degree NNE of NGC 247, which is in turn about three degrees south and one east of beta Ceti. I used 98x to orient myself to the stars in the area, and was getting hints of structure at the position of the "chain", at that magnification. I put in my Vixen Lanthanum 8-24 mm zoom eyepiece, and played with magnifications from 163x up a ways, but the view did not improve. Finally I tried my 32 mm University Optics Erfle, which gave 122x, and was rewarded with intermittent detections of different galaxies in the chain, popping in and out one or two at a time at the limit of averted vision. I could not hold all of the galaxies at once, so I could not count how many I could see, but there were certainly several. The flickery, irregular appearance prompted me to write "a conga line of ghosts" in my observing notes. Or -- since I was observing with Harvey -- perhaps they were doing the bunny hop.

By late evening Saturday, I was thoroughly deep-spaced out, so I decided to look at Jupiter and Saturn. I had looked at Jupiter briefly the night before -- a transit of Europa had been in progress -- but poor seeing had made it difficult to track the tiny moon as it crossed the face of the planet somewhat ahead of its shadow. Conditions were better Saturday, though not perfect. Perhaps the best way I can characterize how the seeing restricted the C-14's potential is to say that on Saturday I could at best detect only an occasional elongation of gamma-two Andromeda, which Harvey has separated with plenty of dark space in between, on good nights. A friend had a superb Astro-Physics 180 mm f/9 EDT set up ten or twenty meters away. I had been anxious to compare our two telescopes, and though Saturday was not a night for a definitive shoot-out, it provided a chance for some pot shots.

There is always something going on on Jupiter, and the giant planet rotates fast enough that you can watch its face change from minute to minute. Saturday night provided a view of the spot formerly known as Great Red -- now wan, diminished and pale, as if blood-sucked by some cosmic vampire -- but that was early in the evening, before the seeing had settled.

The view later on had plenty of detail, though. There were dark spots and notable embayments and indentations in the north equatorial belt . The south equatorial belt had appeared separated into northern and southern components early in the evening, and for a time the light streak that effected the separation appeared itself to be bifurcated, consisting of two parallel streaks, but as the planet rotated, the separator trailed off into clumps and eventually all but disappeared. There were also clumps and ovals in the south temperate area, and a nice garland appeared late in the evening, extending from the north equatorial belt into the equatorial zone and back out again. I could see all this without great trouble in the C-14, during moments when the seeing settled, and these were only the highlights -- there was lots of other detail present.

I tried magnifications from 150x through 435x in the C-14, and finally settled on 196x -- Meade 20 mm Research-Grade Erfle -- as about right for conditions. This eyepiece is not what most people would use for planetary observations -- it has six air/glass interfaces -- but I had left my 16 mm and 24 mm Brandons at home.

From time to time I wandered over to the AP 180, whose owner was running a similar range of magnifications, though usually with better eyepieces -- Zeiss Abbe Orthoscopics -- and often with a Zeiss binoviewer (yes, he has two sets of Zeiss Abbes). The binoviewer did exactly nothing for me, however -- I preferred to offset my head to the side and look through it with just one eye, or to swap it out for a single eyepiece. (The Zeiss binoviewer has an inexcusable design fault -- there is no adjustment for differential focus between the two eyepieces. In this respect Zeiss engineering is inferior to that in inexpensive imported binoculars which cost two percent as much.)

The AP owner also came by and looked through my telescope occasionally, and two or three other folks who frequently look at planets also looked through both telescopes in succession. It was interesting to hear different reactions to the two instruments.

The only point on which there seemed to be unquestioned consensus was that the seeing did not allow the C-14 to perform well, nearly as often as it allowed the AP 180 to do so. The moments of peak clarity, during which observers gasp "Wow!", were fewer, shorter, and farther between for the big Schmidt-Cassegrain than for the refractor. For that reason alone, many people might have preferred the view in the AP 180.

There appeared to be less agreement on the comparative height of those peaks -- the actual relative performance of the two instruments. My opinion was that if an observer was willing to wait patiently for quite a while, then during moments of excellent seeing, he or she might see more fine, high-contrast detail through the C-14. Specifically, I thought that there were brief moments during which I had a better view in Harvey of the clumpiness in the separator of the south equatorial belt, and perhaps of the swirls and ovals in the south temperate area, than in the big refractor. I think at least one of the other observers may have agreed with me, but I don't think the owner of the AP did. On the other hand, he spent most of his time looking through his telescope, and I spent most of my time looking through mine, so we each had a better chance to see our own instruments at their best, than each other's.

With respect to lower-contrast detail, I do not think the C-14 was doing as well as the AP 180. I don't think I had as good a view of the big garland through the C-14, and I had much more difficulty seeing some fine, east/west streakiness in cap of Jupiter's northern hemisphere, say, north of jovian latitude 50 N. Also, prominent color contrasts and intensity variations, seen in comparing large-scale features, such as the equatorial belts and the adjacent zones, did not appear to me to be as pronounced in the C-14 as in the refractor.

All this makes perfect sense in terms of theory -- I might put it in more abstract terms by suggesting that Harvey's modulation transfer function extends to higher frequences than the AP 180's before going to zero, but that it does not rise away from zero as steeply as does the 180's, so that there is a coarser-frequency domain in which the AP delivers more contrast: That is, once the AP 180 comes on line, it ramps up fast. That is about what one would expect considering that the C-14 has twice the aperture, plus a central obstruction of about one-third diameter, and that its wavefront correction -- though quite good for a C-14 -- is certainly not up to the standards to which Roland Christen holds his magnificent triplets.

One observer made a comment that illustrated an aspect of telescope performance I hadn't thought of. He said words to the effect of "Hey, the extra light [in Harvey] sure helps with seeing that garland." He was right -- the visual acuity of the eye generally does increase as brightness goes up. It is certainly possible that there are times and frequency domains when increased image brightness may more than compensate for lower modulation transfer function, for visual observation.

It will be most interesting to compare these telescopes at future times, preferably in excellent seeing. In my experience, Fremont Peak delivers best seeing when there is an inversion layer, and -- perhaps because of the warm ocean temperatures associated with El Nino -- we have had few of them this year. I will also try to remember to bring my Brandons to future star parties.

After I had put Harvey to bed, I wandered by the AP 180 again, and found everybody looking at Saturn. The view was better than we had had earlier, whether because seeing had improved or because the planet had risen higher, I did not know. I asked to try a high magnification, and the owner obliged with a 4 mm Zeiss Abbe Orthoscopic, delivering 405x. At that magnification, several of us thought we had a possible detection of the broad diminution of brightness in the middle of the A ring, which has sometimes previously been called the Encke Minimum (and which is different from the Encke division -- that's narrower and farther out, and we did not see it). I looked for "spokes" in the rings, too, but didn't see any of them, either.